News Clipping from The Hollywood Reporter (August 1999):

"Uma Thurman is about to reunite with her "Dangerous Liaisons" scribe Christopher Hampton. Thurman is attached to star in the indie "The Custom of the Country, which Hampton wrote and will direct from Edith Wharton's 1913 novel. No financing is in place for the project, one of several Wharton adaptations that have caught the eye of Hollywood following Martin Scorsese's "The Age of Innocence" and John Maddens "Ethan Frome"."

From Amazon.com:

"First published in 1913, Edith Wharton's The Custom Of The Country is scathing novel of ambition featuring one of the most ruthless heroines in literature. Undine Spragg is as unscrupulous as she is magnetically beautiful. Her rise to the top of New York's high society from the nouveau riche provides a provocative commentary on the upwardly mobile and the aspirations that eventually cause their ruin. One of Wharton's most acclaimed works, The Custom Of The Country is a stunning indictment of materialism and misplaced values that is as powerful today for its astute observations about greed and power as when it was written nearly a century ago."

Well I guess if you've read the plot summary I don't really need to tell you how great this film could be for Uma. It sounds like a terrific character, one that could finally push her through from being the extremely promising talent she is now to the fully-fledged heavyweight she is destined to become.

I have no doubt about Uma's abilities to rise to this role, she always performs best when challenged, all she needs is for Christopher Hampton to deliver at his end. Now, he's hardly been setting the world on fire since the brilliance of his Dangerous Liaisons script, but we know he's got it in him and the source material certainly sounds very good. In fact, based on the description above, Undine Spragg has obvious similarities to the anti-heroine of Dangerous Liaisons, the Marquise de Merteuil. I'm more excited about the possibilities for this film than any of Uma's other upcoming projects. Of course, doing a Edith Wharton adaptation so soon after doing a Henry James adaptation is a bit repetitious, but she couldn't very well turn this role down.

Nothing seems to be too concrete at the moment, so let's hope they secure all the necessary funds and we start to hear of some more people getting involved. 

The complete lack of news coming back about this film since the initial announcement in The Hollywood Reporter is definitely concerning. The longer it stays in development limbo, the less likely it looks that this film will get made - at least with Uma attached anyway (girl can't wait around forever). That may not be such a bad thing, I'd really like to see Uma get back to some more contemporary films (the last one was Beautiful Girls in 1996). But then again, Undine Spragg does sound like a great role...