Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts move to August: Osage County

Big-name stars Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts are reportedly in negotiations to play Violet and Barbara Weston, the warring mother-daughter duo at the core of August: Osage County, in the film adaptation of Tracy Letts's Pulitzer and Tony Award winning play. As first reported tonight by film-industry news and gossip site Deadline.com, Roberts and Streep are locking down a deal with the Weinstein Company, which was a backer of the play's Broadway production; other outlets, including The Hollywood Reporter and New York magazine's Vulture blog, are now saying the same.

The film will be directed by John Wells, the Emmy-winning producer and co-creator of ER and The West Wing; the Weinstein Company is releasing Wells's feature directing debut, The Company Men, in October. Letts has been working on the screenplay for an August: Osage film for a couple of years. Roberts and Streep will be stepping into the formidable but formidably less famous shoes of Amy Morton and Deanna Dunagan (pictured), who originated the roles of Barbara and Violet at Steppenwolf in June 2007. They, along with almost all of Steppenwolf's Chicago cast, took the play to Broadway later that year; Morton and Dunagan both were nominated for the Tony for Best Actress in a Play (Dunagan took it home). Letts and Morton will take on another larger-than-life stage duo, George and Martha of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, at Steppenwolf in December.