Colin Farrell, Ralph Fiennes and Wagner Moura are teaming up for Art, a comedy movie based on Yasmina Reza’s play about three long-time friends whose bond is tested by a painting that looks, in one man’s eyes, like a disaster. Fernando Meirelles is set to direct the English-language adaptation, with Christopher Hampton writing the screenplay and Patrick Wachsberger’s 193 launching sales at the Cannes market.
The project gives Meirelles a reunion with Fiennes and Farrell, while also bringing him back with Moura, whom he has worked with on multiple projects. Meirelles previously directed Fiennes in The Constant Gardener and Farrell on the Apple series Sugar, and he has also produced several projects starring Moura, including the film VIPs.
The source material has had a long afterlife. Art opened in Paris in 1994 and later moved to London’s West End, Broadway and Sydney, Australia, becoming one of the more durable stage successes of the last three decades. A recent Broadway version starred Bobby Cannavale, James Corden and Neil Patrick Harris.
In Reza’s play, Serge buys a large, expensive, completely white painting with some slightly-less white lines, setting off a rupture with Marc that grows increasingly bitter while Yvan tries to placate both sides. That central argument is what has kept the work alive on stage for years, and it is the reason the movie has lingered in development through years of behind-the-scenes talk about a screen version.
Now, the adaptation is moving with a cast built around a three-time Oscar nominee, an Oscar nominee and a recent Oscar nominee, under a multiple Oscar winner who has already shown he knows how to film friction without losing the comedy in it. The next step is Cannes, where 193 will try to sell the package to buyers as the team turns one of theater’s most argument-prone friendships into a film ready for the market.