This Must be the Place for Frances McDormand

After doing a double take when it was announced she’d be joining Transformers part trois, Frances McDormand is back into more familiar genre items as she has just joined a project that has been “dormant” since it was announced at last year’s Cannes film festival. McDormand will be joining Sean Penn (he hasn’t bailed on this one yet) in Paolo Sorrentino’s English language directorial debut. PW mentions that this begins filming in August, but at this point it’s not clear whether this is set in Italy or the U.S. or for that matter anywhere else. Update: The production are scouting locations in Ireland.

Co-written by Sorrentino and Umberto Contarello, This Must be the Place is about a wealthy rock star (Penn) who becomes bored in his retirement and takes on the quest of finding his father’s executioner, an ex-Nazi war criminal who is a refugee in the U.S. At some point in the timeline, Toni Servillo, the star of Sorrentino’s Il Divo was also attached to the film.