Morgan Freeman has signed up to co-star with Diane Keaton in a dramedy titled Life Itself, which is based on a novel by Jill Ciment titled Heroic Measures. 

Here’s Amazon’s description of the novel:

New York City is on high alert—a gasoline truck is “stuck” in the Midtown tunnel and the driver has fled. Through panic and gridlock, Alex and Ruth must transport their beloved old dachshund—whose back legs are suddenly paralyzed—to the animal hospital, using a cutting board as a stretcher.  But this is also the weekend when Alex and Ruth must sell the apartment in which they have lived for most of their adult lives. Over the course of forty-eight hours, as the mystery of the missing truck driver terrorizes the city and the dachshund’s life hangs in the balance, the bidding war over their apartment becomes a barometer for collective hope and despair.  Told in shifting points of view—Alex’s, Ruth’s, and the little dog’s—Heroic Measures is a moving, deft novel about urban anxiety and the love that deepens over years.

Freeman and Keaton, starring together in a movie for the very first time, will play Alex and Ruth, the long-married New York City couple, in a film that’s backed by Myriad Pictures, and will be directed by Richard Loncraine, from a script written by Charlie Peters.

Meanwhile, Freeman’s Revelations Entertainment will produce with Latitude Productions. 

Myriad Pictures is shopping the project at Cannes.

Freeman can currently be seen in the sci-fi thriller Oblivion, with Tom Cruise.