Wow, it's going to be tough to top the Oscars prestige of these two. Oscar winner and current Oscar frontrunner Viola Davis, who just won the SAG Award last night for her performance in Fences, is set to team with past victor Julia Roberts on an adaptation of Jodi Picoult's popular novel, Small Great Things.
The novel has been described as one of Picoult's most important books, and somehow manages to tell a heartwarming tale dealing with white supremacists. Whoa, please tell me Roberts will be wearing a white sheet! Here's the synopsis:
Ruth Jefferson is a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty years’ experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she’s been reassigned to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don’t want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey orders or does she intervene?
Ruth hesitates before performing CPR and, as a result, is charged with a serious crime. Kennedy McQuarrie, a white public defender, takes her case but gives unexpected advice: Kennedy insists that mentioning race in the courtroom is not a winning strategy. Conflicted by Kennedy’s counsel, Ruth tries to keep life as normal as possible for her family—especially her teenage son—as the case becomes a media sensation. As the trial moves forward, Ruth and Kennedy must gain each other’s trust, and come to see that what they’ve been taught their whole lives about others—and themselves—might be wrong.
Oh, okay. Roberts is probably playing the public defender. Darnit. Anyway, a producer on La La Land, which has fourteen Oscar nominations and has earned over $200M worldwide, is attached to the project making this more of an instant Hollywood darling. This won't be the first time Davis and Roberts have worked together as they starred in a an adaptation of Eat Pray Love in 2010.
It'll be interesting to see who they get to direct, but with Davis and Roberts they could probably hand it over to a sock puppet and things would turn out okay.
