Various British sources have reported on current funding news for “The Iron Lady”, sounding quite negative, most probably due to the original negative statements by the Daily Telegraph. According to the Guardian, the UK Film Council’s last large-scale donations has been to the forthcoming Margaret Thatcher biopic, The Iron Lady, which was awarded £1m in October. Some see the move as an 11th-hour snook cocked at the Conservatives who, if rumours surrounding the script are to believed, may not welcome the project. Tim Walker of the Daily Telegraph reports that Thatcher’s family were “appalled” by the sound of the film, which apparently involves the former prime minister reassessing her career with some regret after the death of her husband, Denis, and while she is suffering from dementia. “They think it sounds like some left-wing fantasy,” Walker quotes a friend of the family as saying. Pathé, who are producing the film, insist it will be made with “appropriate sensitivity”. Meryl Streep plays Thatcher, and will be reunited with her Mamma Mia! director Phyllida Lloyd. Jim Broadbent is Denis, while Olivia Colman takes on the role of their daughter, Carol. To be fair, these quotations were published some time back by the Telegraph, quoting “a friend of the family” at a state when the script was probably not seen by anyone except those who were working on it, so let’s see if the negative press will keep up on “The Iron Lady” once it goes into production in early 2011.

The three episodes of “Web Therapy” with Meryl can be now watched at the show’s official website.

Some UT theater students got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity Friday. They got acting tips from two-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep. Streep visited the Forty Acres at the invitation of the University’s department of theatre and dance. Streep says her best advice to students is to set priorities. “You have to get your life right before you can get your art going. At least for me, as an actor, the things that really have mattered most are peripheral to your awards or the parts I’ve played,” Streep said. She continued, “Really the goal of your life is to be a good human being, and the more you know about everything, a little bit of everything, the more you understand the world around you.” According to KVUE Austin News, Streep says in her next film she will portray former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Their website has a video report on the evening, which can be watched below.

Deadline has been a frontrunner lately with exclusive news on upcoming collaborations, such as the planned “August: Osage County” and Michael Patrick King’s untitled comedy. Now, they reporting on a possible appearance on Lisa Kudrow’s web series (!): It seems like the great Meryl Streep is heading to the Web with a stint on Lisa Kudrow’s popular Internet series Web Therapy. I hear that the Oscar-winning actress quietly shot a three-episode arc on the series’ upcoming batch of fresh episodes, which LStudio is expected to launch soon. Details about her character are sketchy but word is she is playing a counselor. Streep has been in such great demand in features (she recently signed to do Michael Patrick King’s new comedy at Universal) that she rarely does anything else, with the exception of an occasional prestige longform TV project such as HBO’s Angels in America. The Webby-winning improv comedy series Web Therapy, created by Kudrow, her producing partner Dan Bucatinsky and writer-director Don Roos, stars Kudrow as Fiona Wallice, a therapist of unspecified credentials. In April, Showtime picked up the produced webisodes of Web Therapy to air as a half-hour series on the pay cable network.

Add another project to the already extensive list of possible new projects, according exclusively to Deadline: In one of the more exceptional cast-attached movie packages to come along in awhile, Universal Pictures has acquired an untitled comedy that will be written and directed by Michael Patrick King and star Meryl Streep, Sandra Bullock and Oprah Winfrey. It’s an ensemble comedy set in the world of a Home Shopping-type network, where characters make their way through the maze of mania that surrounds marketing, marriages and the media. King, who wrote and directed two Sex and the City films after he exec produced the HBO series, told me that as he was looking to create his next vehicle, met with Stuber and they sparked to the idea for a comedy with well-drawn relationships that could draw a top-notch female cast. King decided to aim high. “I came up with the idea of writing for Meryl, Sandy and Oprah, and it became so specific to them that I wanted to be sure I had interest from these ladies,” King told me. “I put it in front of each of them and they all said yes. To have access to these women, tell them this story and hear yes was almost like a Greek mythological journey, with me going from one goddess to the next. It was humbling. They’re all unique, and the idea of writing parts that three strong women will play is such a challenge. Their body of work is beyond reproach. It’s also appealing to craft a character for Oprah to come back and play that’s not Oprah.” King said he will begin writing immediately, and expects to have the script done by January. Availability of the actresses will be an issue, but the hope is to get this into production as King’s next directing effort by next summer or fall. The talent-laden package was put together by CAA, which reps King and the actresses. Universal got first shot at it because Stuber’s based at the studio, and Donna Langley and Adam Fogelson took it off the table before it went elsewhere.

Following the unexpected global success of “Words For You”, a unique album of classic poems, read by British actors and set to classical music, Universal Records imprint label 1st Rule Records announce today that a host of Oscar winning Hollywood actors will feature on “Words For You The Next Chapter” to be released on 8 November 2010. Once again featuring the greatest poems, set to the greatest classical music, “Words For You The Next Chapter” draws on the vocal brilliance of some of the biggest names in Hollywood including Helena Bonham Carter, Jim Broadbent, James Earl Jones, Terence Stamp and Meryl Streep, plus the cream of British acting establishment and new talent Peter Capaldi, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dervla Kirwan, Maureen Lipman, and Rupert Penry Jones. Proportion of proceeds from sales of “Words For You” goes to I CAN, a UK charity that helps children who have difficulties speaking and understanding. www.ican.org.uk. Meryl reads “On Marriage” by Kahill Gibran and “Because I Could Not Stop For Death” by Emily Dickinson. “Words For You The Next Chapter” can be pre-ordered on Amazon UK. Thanks to Doug for contributing these news.

Many thanks to John for sharing this: Academy Award winner Meryl Streep and Pulitzer Prize winner N. Scott Momaday have contributed their considerable talents to Sky Island, a new film on Bandelier National Monument and the Jemez Mountains. The film was written, produced and directed by environmental filmmaker John Grabowska. Participation in the film production was, in a way, a health issue for Streep, relating to open spaces and wild places: “Our personal health depends on the health of the environment,” she said. “Preserving national parks and wildlands is an exercise in long-term thinking about the sustainability of the planet, and it directly impacts each one of us. I hope viewers are inspired by the mood and method of Sky Island. I know I was which is why I wanted to be a part of it.” “It’s such a pleasure to work with artists who are the best in their field,” Grabowska said. “Meryl is charming and down to earth but very dedicated to getting the performance exactly right, even for – or perhaps especially for – a project like this, which addresses dramatic climate change effects in Bandelier and the Jemez. Sky Island is currently on the film festival circuit and will air on PBS in 2011.

The Daily Mail has the latest scoop on the upcoming Thatcher biopic “The Iron Lady”, and according to its author, Baz Bamigboye, Meryl has confirmed to her that she’s indeed going to play Miss Thatcher – he just doesn’t quote when and where she confirmed this: Oscar-winning Meryl Streep has confirmed she will play Margaret Thatcher in a major movie, although a British actress has been ­chosen to portray the former Prime Minister’s early years. Alexandra Roach, a recent ­graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, will play Mrs Thatcher in her 20s in The Iron Lady, which begins shooting in the middle of January – although Meryl will dominate much of the footage.

The two actresses will not only have to study Mrs Thatcher’s voice pattern, but also each other’s. They will do their own research, examining film footage and listening to radio broadcasts and tapes. It hasn’t been decided yet whether or not a dialect coach will be hired to teach the actresses how to capture Mrs Thatcher’s distinctive vocal signature, bearing in mind Meryl’s legendary skill with accents. However, even she may need an expert to help her navigate the period when Mrs Thatcher, on her rise to power, was ordered by her savvy PR master Gordon Reece to lower and soften her often strident voice. The film, based on a screenplay by Abi Morgan, will be directed by Phyllida Lloyd. It’s being produced by Damian Jones with Pathé and Film 4. Morgan’s screenplay reflects on Mrs Thatcher’s life in and out of power, criss-crossing time-zones, looking back on her glory years and her challenges.

Jim Broadbent will play her husband Denis, and he told me that he understood Denis would be a ghost – although that aspect of the screenplay may have changed by January. ‘His purpose would be to visit Margaret Thatcher now and go back over her life. I don’t know how they plan to make me ghostly, or whether some other dramatic device will be used,’ Broadbent, like Streep an Academy Award-winner, told me at a supper for Mike Leigh’s great new movie Another Year, in which he stars with Lesley ­Manville and Ruth Sheen. Reports that The Iron Lady focuses solely on Mrs Thatcher and the Falklands War are wide of the mark. Ms Roach has appeared in The IT Crowd, a forthcoming BBC show called Candy Cabs and she plays one of the leads in ITV’s adaptation of Kate Summerscale’s best-selling novel The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher. Olivia Colman, famous for her roles in Peep Show, Beautiful People and the recent Tom ­Hollander hit Rev, has been cast to play Carol Thatcher.

According to Deadline, Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep are in talks to star for The Weinstein Company in the bigscreen adaptation of the Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer and Tony-winning play August: Osage County. I hear Roberts and Streep have agreed to the project and they are now working out deals and locking a production start. John Wells will direct the film from a script written by the playwright. Production will start by next summer. Streep will play Violet, the drug-addicted matriarch of the working class Weston clan. Roberts will play Barbara Fordham, the oldest daughter in the family. While mom’s problems and her penchant for revealing family secrets is a big issue, Barbara is melting because her husband is cheating with a college student. They are brought together when Violet’s husband goes missing and all three of their daughters come home to rally around mom. In the process, a lot of family secrets get revealed. The film has been developed for several years by Harvey Weinstein, who was involved in the original stage production with Jean Doumanian. As nothing is official as of now, it’s yet another project to the long list of upcoming rumored projects for Meryl.

There are news on Mike Nichols’ planned “Great Hope Springs”. After Jeff Bridges’ department from the project, sources are now reporting on James Gandolfini joining Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman in the drama. Streep and Gandolfini would play a married couple who undergo intense couples therapy to see if they want to continue their 30-year-marriage. Hoffman would play the therapist. According to Vulture, no deals have been signed, but all parties are highly interested, and recently even did a table read.