Winslet and Keener Wonder If It’s “Frank or Francis”

Our hopes are high for "Frank or Francis." I'm sure Kate Winslet feels the same way.

Good casting news! Vulture reports that Kate Winslet and Catherine Keener have joined the cast of “Frank or Francis,” the next film written by Charlie Kaufman. He’ll direct his own script. Steve Carell, Jack Black, Nicolas Cage, and Kevin Kline are already in the cast.

The film is a musical about a successful movie director (Carell) who becomes obsessed with a man who posts negative comments about him online (that’s Black). No word about what roles Winslet and Keener will play.

Both of them have had success with films written by Kaufman: Keener in “Being John Malkovich” and “Synechdoche, New York” (which Kaufman also directed) and Winslet in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” which I consider the best movie of the first decade of the 2000s. No word on who they’ll play here, but I love that they’re in the Kaufman universe.

Keener has two movies from 2011 that haven’t found release yet, “Maladies” and “A Late Quartet.” Winslet had “Contagion” and “Carnage” out late last year and will be seen this year in “Movie 43,” the assemblage of all star shorts. She’s also booked for “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society,” with Kenneth Branagh directing.