One kicked ass in the Tomb Raider franchise and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, while the other played deadly assassins in Die Another Day and John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum. And now Angelina Jolie and Halle Berry are joining forces for an explosive new action thriller. On 18 April, Deadline confirmed the news that the Oscar-winning pair are set to star in Maude v Maude, a globe-trotting blockbuster described by the publication’s insider source as a “Bond v Bourne–type” project.
It’s not yet known who will embody a slick super spy and who will take on the part of a scrappy outsider, but New Zealander Roseanne Liang (Shadow in the Cloud) has been tapped to direct from a script by Scott Mosier (Clerks). Both Jolie and Berry will also act as producers, and the glamorous locations they’ll be jetting off to are expected to be revealed in due course.
The film was the subject of an intense, multistudio bidding war last week, ultimately being snapped up by Warner Bros. The frenzy around it mirrors that which surrounded the still untitled Max Barbakow–helmed body-swap comedy starring Julia Roberts and Jennifer Aniston when it was announced back in January—further proof that Hollywood’s previously dismissive attitudes to women in their 40s and 50s are changing, slowly but surely.
Before the action veterans unite, though, expect to see them in a wide range of other projects: Halle Berry has parts in the sci-fi adventure The Mothership and the horror movie Never Let Go, and Angelina Jolie is gearing up to play legendary opera singer Maria Callas in a sweeping biopic from Pablo Larraín. Clearly, there’s nothing they can’t do.
