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Kasdan will direct the Castle Rock remake from a script by Terri Minsky ('Lizzie Maguire').
'Martha' is about a top-notch female chef who's a whiz in the kitchen but a mess elsewhere. Her life is turned upside-down when her sister is killed and she must take care of her orphaned niece.
Romance blossoms when she hires a charming male chef. The original picture, released Stateside last year by Paramount Classics, was written and directed by Sandra Nettelbeck.
'It's a terrific love story that is often very funny, and has one of the best roles for a woman that I've seen in a long time', Kasdan said. 'She is very prickly, disciplined and set in her ways, not unlike a high-strung artist. She has to adapt by necessity, and food provides wonderful metaphors for life issues'.
Kasdan wanted Minsky to write it because of her unproduced script 'Anchor Women', which Kasdan once considered directing at Imagine.
'There were a bunch of women-in-TV projects, and that was by far the smartest', he said. 'This film will work if it retains the sophisticated, tough-minded European edge of the original, and Terri seemed the right person to preserve that'.
If Minsky can adapt 'Mostly Martha' to an American setting quickly, Kasdan would direct it as his next project. He also is developing the Castle Rock comedy 'Pet Therapy' with scribe Rebecca Belfield, about a couple drawn together through group counseling for those with dead or lost pets.
Kasdan returns to theaters on March 21 with his adaptation of Stephen King's 'Dreamcatcher'. The picture combines the spectacle of Kasdan-scripted films like 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' with the relationship focus of films he's directed like 'The Big Chill'. His last film was 1999's 'Mumford'.
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