Mike Figgis to Direct SECONDS OF HAPPINESS; Christina Hendricks, Julia Stiles, and Matt Dillon Join Cast

Director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) has stepped in to replace Neil LaBute in an adaptation of LaBute’s collection of short stories, Seconds of Happiness.  The frame of the narrative takes place on an airplane and examines the interconnecting lives of various passengers through vignettes.  Clearly, this will be just like Lost.  Deadline also reports that Brendan Fraser and Kristen Scott Thomas will be joined by Christina Hendricks, Julia Stiles, and Matt Dillon.  Hendricks will play a woman who catches her husband (Fraser) in a “compromising position.”  Because I’ve never read LaBute’s book but have seen every episode of Lost, I imagine Fraser’s position has something to do with pushing a button every 108 minutes.  LaBute is still on board to produce and shooting is expected to begin this summer.
Hendricks recently signed on to star in the ensemble comedy I Don’t Know How She Does It while Dillon is attached to co-star in Roman Polanski’s God of Carnage and Matthew Weiner’s You Are Here.  Stiles recently co-starred on Showtime’s Dexter.   Hit the jump for the synopsis of Seconds of Pleasure.

Here’s the synopsis for Neil LaBute’s Seconds of Pleasure [via Amazon]:

Neil LaBute is best known for his controversial films In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, and his plays The Mercy Seat and The Shape of Things—which he also adapted for the screen. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and Harper’s Bazaar, among others. Now, in his debut collection of stories, he brings to the page his cutting humor and compelling take on the shadowy terrain of the human heart. Seductive and disturbing, the stories in Seconds of Pleasure are not for the faint of heart. Each potent and pithy tale finds men and women exploiting—or at the mercy of—the hidden fault lines that separate them: a woman leaves her family at their vacation home after discovering her husband in a compromising situation in “Time Share”; a middle-aged man obsesses over a scab on the calf of a pretty young girl in “Boo-Boo”; and a vain Hollywood actor gets his comeuppance in “Soft Target.” Infused with LaBute’s trademark wit and black humor, Seconds of Pleasure unleashes his imagination in stories that offer unflinching insight into our very human shortcomings and impure urges with shocking candor.

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