EXCLUSIVE From Deadline|London editor Tim Adler: Showtime just toni_collette_2242568started airing the 2nd season of Toni Collette’s Emmy-winning tour de force, The United States Of Tara. But she and Ioan Gruffudd star in the family film that started shooting yesterday for six weeks on location in London. Richard E Grant and Hayley Mills and Anne Reid (The Mother) round out the cast. Foster marks the second collaboration between director Jonathan Newman and producer Deepak Nayar (The Walker). Newman only finished doing pick-up shots on their first collaboration, Swinging With the Finkels, the day before Foster‘s filming began.

Collette and Gruffudd play a married couple who decide to adopt after their own son is killed. One day a boy unexpectedly arrives on their doorstep. There’s a terrific twist that I can only describe as a feel-good Sixth Sense. It gives me shivers every time I think about it. The film’s based on a previously made Newman short, which he sold to both the BBC and HBO. Peter Farrelly, one half of the infamous Farrelly brothers, was so impressed that he telephoned Newman out of the blue and invited him out to LA to work on the feature together.

Ingenious is putting money into Foster, which SC Films International is selling along with Finkels, in which Martin Freeman and Mandy Moore star as a bored married couple who decide to spice up their lives by becoming wife swappers. SC Films will be taking Finkels to Cannes along with five other movies including The Romantics, starring Katie Holmes, and British opera comedy Cosi. So far, Finkels has sold to Germany and Russia.

Newman met Nayar after coming in runner-up in a screenplay competition run by Fox network and the producer’s Filmaka website. It’s nice to see things are finally happening for Newman, who’s been on the scene for almost as long as I have. For years it seemed as if he was plugging away without getting anywhere much. Now it looks as if he’s about to break through.

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