Stephen Belber earned plenty of praise for his Broadway play Match, but now he's ready to bring the theatrical experience to the big screen and he has landed an impressive cast t do it with. The writer/director is now set to both adapt and helm a movie version of his play and has enlisted the help of Patrick Stewart, Carla Gugino and Matthew Lillard to help him.
Deadline notes that the story centers on a reclusive Juilliard dance instructor and former choreographer named Tobi (played by Stewart) who is one day visited by a couple, Mike and Lisa (Gugino and Lillard), who claim that they want to interview him for a thesis they are writing about dancing in New York during the 1960s. But after a while Tobi discovers that the couple actually has an entirely different motive for meeting with him and quickly "he finds himself unable to dance around the impact of decisions he made long ago." The stage version starred Frank Langella, Ray Liotta and Jane Adams and ran on Broadway for two months.
Belber is best known for his work in the theater, but does have some film and television experience. In addition to having multiple plays previously turned into features, he wrote episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Rescue Me. In 2008 he both wrote and directed the original film Management starring Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn. Stewart will soon begin production on Bryan Singer's X-Men: Days of Future Past; Lillard most recently worked on the sports drama One Heart; and Gugino has long been attached to Sheldon Turner's By Virtue Fall.
