Jennifer Lopez to star in Robert Zemeckis Netflix movie "The Last Mrs. Parrish"

The movie is called "The Last Mrs. Parrish." It's based on a 2017 novel of the same name that got a bump from being in Reese Witherspoon's mass-appeal book club. The story is a psychological thriller with a distaff "The Talented Mr. Ripley" vibe in terms of focusing on somebody manipulating their way into getting closer to a rich person to bask in the glow of their wealth.

Unless Zemeckis has something strange planned, this feels like a straightforward film. It might be akin to when Zemeckis directed 2016's "Allied," a forgotten thriller starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard.

Of course, the X factor here is the Netflix of it all. Even if this is what it seems to be, a B-/C+ thriller in the making, you know Netflix will promote it hard. It's going to the first thing you see when you open the app, and it's going to start auto-playing. Netflix will say that it's been watched more than 10 Super Bowls combined and it will appear in its "most watched" carousel, validly or otherwise. "A Jennifer Lopez thriller? Sure, why not" people will say to themselves.

That is the space filled by movies like "The Last Mrs. Parrish." If "appointment-viewing filler" is not an oxymoron, that's what this seems to be. Take a popular book, put a famous face front and center, hire a capable director, churn out something watchable. Both Lopez and Zemeckis should get a boost from this. What Lopez does after that we do not know, but we bet Zemeckis has something wild and uncanny in the back of his mind.

(h/t The Hollywood Reporter)