Netflix has lined up Ritesh Batra to direct an adaptation of Kent Haruf’s novel, Our Souls At Night, set to star Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.
According to US film trade Deadline, UK-based producer Finola Dwyer (Brooklyn, An Education) was instrumental in bringing Batra on board and will also produce alongside Redford and Erin Simms.
Best known for Hindi-language romantic drama The Lunchbox, Batra recently wrapped his English-language debut The Sense Of An Ending, starring Charlotte Rampling and Jim Broadbent.
Redford and Fonda haven’t appeared in a movie together since The Electric Horseman in 1979. They also both starred in Barefoot In The Park in 1967.
Haruf’s novel follows a widow in a small town in Colorado who strikes up a relationship with a widower, also living alone. The author, who also wrote Plainsong (1999) and Benediction (2013), died in November 2014.
The script for Our Souls At Night is written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, whose credits include 500 Days Of Summer and The Spectacular Now.
Although much in demand for English-language projects, Batra is also developing Hindi-language films such as The Photographer, which he plans to direct, and Raj Rishi More’s Pirates, to be produced by Batra through his company Poetic License Motion Pictures.