Great news from Deadline today. Eyeing a September shoot, helmer Catherine Hardwicke is boarding comedy/drama Miss You Already, with Rachel Weisz and Toni Collette attached to star. The pair will play lifelong best friends whose relationship is tested as they confront a crisis. Morwenna Banks, best known for her UK acting credits including rachel weisztoni colletteSkins, Shameless and Peppa Pig, wrote Miss You Already based on personal experience. Hardwicke says of Banks’ story of intense friendship, “This is something she lived through. She managed to take real life and turn it into a powerful, laugh‐ and cry‐out‐loud screenplay.” When the project was originally announced during Berlin in 2012, it had Jennifer Aniston attached to star, and Paul Andrew Williams directing. At the time, the story was very London-centric, but has since been expanded.

Samantha Horley, Managing Director of The Salt Company, tells me, “We have a fresh new draft of the script for Cannes which has been worked on by Catherine and Morwenna. It’s no longer just London set, for example, but London, Yorkshire Moors and beautiful Britain. What we feel Catherine has brought to it is a sweeping international appeal.” The Salt Company is co-producing with Exponential Media and Maven Pictures, and has international sales. CAA is co-repping North America. Entertainment One previously acquired UK, Canada and Australia rights.

Toni Collette, who’s currently shooting Fox Searchlight’s “Hitchcock” and will spend her summer filming Jim Rash and Nat Faxon’s directorial debut “The Way, Way Back,” has lined up roles in two more prestige indies, as she’s in negotiations to join Jennifer Aniston in Paul Andrew Williams’ “Miss You Already” and Pascal Chaumeil’s “The Long Way Down,” based on the book by Nick Hornby. Pierce Brosnan is also in negotiations to star in “Long Way Down,” which will be produced by Amanda Posey and Finola Dwyer, the Oscar-nominated duo who previously worked with Hornby on “An Education.” Jack Thorne adapted Hornby’s novel, which follows four strangers on New Year’s Eve who coincidentally plan to jump to their deaths from the same rooftop. Collette is in talks to play the helpless single mom of a disabled young man, while Brosnan is in talks to play a scandal-plagued talkshow host. Pic will shoot from late summer to early fall in London.

In “Miss You Already,” Collette and Aniston would play lifelong best friends who help each other face the biggest challenges of their respective lives as one battles breast cancer and the other prepares for the birth of her first child while the baby’s father is away on business. Collette is negotiating to play the latter character, who’s the more reserved of the duo. Williams wrote the script with Morwenna Banks, and Chris Simon is producing the dramatic two-hander, which will shoot this fall in London. The Weinstein Co. just picked up Williams’ “Song for Marion” for domestic distribution and is planning an awards push for the film later this year. Collette is currently working with Anthony Hopkins on the Los Angeles set of Sacha Gervasi’s “Hitchcock,” in which she plays the “Psycho” helmer’s fiercely protective longtime assistant. Once she wraps that period pic, the “United States of Tara” alum will segue to “The Way, Way Back,” in which she’ll play the young protag’s mother and wife of Steve Carell’s philandering character.