Meryl Streep will continue to fight for the truth in her next film. Coming off her Oscar-nominated role in Pentagon Papers drama “The Post,” Streep has signed on for a thriller about the Panama Papers — leaked documents that detailed how the clients at law firm Mossack Fonseca illegally laundered money around the world. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news.
Details on the film are being kept under wraps, but Streep’s character is reportedly “the emotional throughline.”
“The Laundromat” is based on Jake Bernstein’s book “Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite.” Steven Soderbergh is directing from a script by Scott Z. Burns (“Side Effects”).
Streep portrayed former Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham in “The Post.” The biopic followed Graham and editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) as the newspaper covered a massive government cover-up involving the Vietnam War during the early ’70s. The pic also explored the increasingly fraught relationship between the press and the government.
“Mamma Mia!” sequel “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” and reboot “Mary Poppins Returns” are among Streep’s upcoming projects. The former hits theaters July 20 and the latter December 25. Streep will also appear in Season 2 of “Big Little Lies.” She’ll play Mary Louise Wright, the mother-in-law of Nicole Kidman’s Celeste. Celeste was abused by Mary Louise’s son, who — spoiler alert –died in the Season 1 finale. Andrea Arnold is directing every ep of the HBO hit’s sophomore season.
“It was the whole culture that undermined all women, especially women that should’ve had the most agency of all — highly educated wealthy women who had every opportunity to step into important places in life but they sat back,” Streep has said of the environment Graham operated in as publisher of The Post. “The more I read about her, the more I thought, ‘Who do you think you are trying to be — Katharine Graham?’ She was so thoughtful, deep-principled, and wily in that way that women had to be when they were only the second tier of a society.”