Christoph Waltz has been cast as iconic filmmaker Billy Wilder in a film adaptation of Jonathan Coe’s novel Mr. Wilder and Me, Variety reports.
Coe’s novel, published in 2020 by Penguin U.K., tells the story of a young woman who works on the set of Wilder’s Fedora, the second-to-last film that Wilder directed, in 1977. The publisher describes the novel as “at once a tender coming-of-age story and an intimate portrait of one of cinema's most intriguing figures.” It will be published in the U.S. by Europa Editions in September.
Wilder was known for directing now-classic films such as Some Like It Hot, Sunset Boulevard, and The Apartment. Like Waltz, he was raised and educated in Austria.
The film adaptation of Coe’s book, titled Billy Wilder & Me, will be written by Christopher Hampton, who won Academy Awards for his screenplays for Dangerous Liaisons and The Father. His other notable scripts include The Quiet American and Atonement. Directing the film will be Stephen Frears, known for movies including My Beautiful Laundrette, High Fidelity, and Florence Foster Jenkins.
“Billy Wilder said, ‘You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning,’” Waltz said of the project. “A Stephen Frears movie from a Christopher Hampton script produced by Jeremy Thomas should do the trick for me.”
The film’s production is scheduled to begin next year.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
