Sam Shepard in Talks to Join AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY Film

Related: Sam Shepard, Tracy Letts, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, John Wells

According to Variety, playwright Sam Shepard is in talks to play Beverly West on in the film adaptation of Tracy Letts' play August: Osage County, directed by John Wells.

Read the original report here.

Shepard would join previously announced Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, along with Juliette Lewis, Abigail Breslin, Margo Martindale, Chris Cooper, Benedict Cumberbatch, Andrea Riseborough and Dermot Mulroney.

The play, which originally premiered at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company, opened on Broadway in December of 2007 and was the recipient of the 2008 Tony Award for Best Play.

The film, directed by John Wells, will see Streep and Roberts playing family matriarch Violet and her eldest daughter, respectively. Riseborough takes on the role of Violet's youngest daughter, Karen. Cooper will play Violet's brother in law. Cumberbatch will portray the sensitive son of Streep’s sister, Mattie Fay Aiken (Martindale), and now Shepard would play the "family patriarch" Beverly West on.

The story follows the Weston family whose lives have been "splintered in many directions until their alcoholic father's disappearance brings them back to their childhood home and to the dysfunctional woman who raised them."

The film is a Jean Doumanian / Smokehouse Production, produced by George Clooney & Grant Heslov, Jean Doumanian, Steve Traxler. Shooting is set to begin this September for a possible 2013 release date.

Shepard most recently appeared on screen in Safe House and Darling Companion and will next appear with Brad Pitt in Killing Them Softly, as well as Mud and Out of the Furnace. The actor was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff in 1983.

Shepard is the author of the plays Buried Child, True West, Heartless, Ages Of The Moon, Operation Sidewinder, Curse of the Starving Class, A Lie of the Mind, Fool for Love and more. Buried Child won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979.