Entertainment Weekly Nicole Sperling is reporting that Winona Ryder‘s having landed the part of Kevin James‘ cheating spouse in Ron Howard’s Cheaters (a.k.a., Your Cheating Heart/Untitled Cheating Project) indicates a career rebound.
My three reactions: (1) Ryder’s part is arguably the least fleshed-out of the four leads, or at least it was in the October ’09 draft of Alan Leob‘s script that I reviewed on 2.23; (2) the movie is essentially about the inability of James’ longtime friend and business partner (played by Vince Vaughn) to man up and tell James that his wife might be up to something on the side — he actually hems and haws about whether to share this vitally important suspicion with a guy he cares about; and (3) there are no cheaters plural in Cheaters but a single infidel (Ryder’s Geneva character), unless you want to say that Vaughn is figuratively “cheating” on James.
The implication of Cheaters, however, suggests a nifty premise — a movie about two guys and their significant others who are all cheating on each other at the same time. Now that’s a funny set-up. That I would pay to see.
Cheaters will begin shooting in Chicago in May, Sperling reports.