One of Hollywood’s darkest ever anti-romantic comedies, The War of the Roses (1989) starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as a couple going through a blisteringly bitter divorce. Thirty-six years on, it has been remade – or reimagined – with Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch as the unhappy couple. Cumberbatch is Theo Rose, a famous architect, and Colman is Ivy Rose, a small-time cook. But when his career crashes while hers goes into orbit, the Roses’ relationship gets thorny. Co-starring Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon, the film is directed by Jay Roach (Meet the Parents, Austin Powers), and written by Tony McNamara (The Favourite, Cruella), who says that his screenplay is even more outrageous than the 1980s one, but not, perhaps, as cynical. “We were like, ‘Let’s do a movie about people who want to stay married rather than two people trying to destroy each other,'” McNamara said on Streaming Movie Night. “A sophisticated adult screwball comedy didn’t seem like it had been done for a while in a proper commercial way, and so it seemed like an opportunity.”
