Harry Potter director Chris Columbus will have a star-studded cast for his upcoming murder mystery. The film, titled The Thursday Murder Club, has just added several high-profile names.

Columbus' upcoming film will star Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren, and Ben Kingsley. The upcoming murder mystery will adapt British TV host and producer Richard Osman's eponymous novel. Osman confirmed the news on his podcast, The Rest is Entertainment. The Thursday Murder Club will come from Steven Spielberg's production company, Amblin Entertainment.

The Thursday Murder Club is the first book in the series of the same name, and was published in 2020. The novel takes place in a retirement home, where a group of unlikely friends meet up to investigate unsolved murders. They soon find themselves in the mist of their first case when they find themselves solving a real case.

Mirren is set to play Elizabeth Best, an ex-spy, Kingsley will play ex-psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif, and Brosnan will play former union activist Ron Ritchie. The initial group consists of four members, but Deadline reports negotiations are still ongoing for the fourth member, Joyce Meadowcroft.

Chris Columbus (Harry Potter, Home Alone) will direct and adapt the murder mystery. Filming for The Thursday Murder Club will begin at the end of June in the UK. Production is expected to wrap up in September, the author revealed on the podcast.

Spielberg's production house acquired the rights for the novel in 2020. Initially, Ol Parker was attached to the project, which was supposed to start filming in March 2024. Meryl Streep and Viola Davis were rumored to be a part of the cast. However, the two are not set to appear in the film based on the new casting.

Chris Columbus Isn't Attached to More Harry Potter Projects

Chris Columbus directed the first two Harry Potter movies. However, he didn't get a chance to direct all of them, despite voicing his assumption he would helm all of them. "At the time I thought I would be directing all seven, not having realized how exhausting directing the first two would be -- physically, mentally, not seeing my family," Columbus told The A.V. Club in 2021. Plans changed later, and he opted not to return for the third installment, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, who was directed by Alfonso Cuarón.

The same year, he also voiced his opinion that the series doesn't need a remake. "In this version of Hollywood that we live in, everybody is remaking everything, and rebooting everything. I mean, there’s a Home Alone reboot coming out. What’s the point? The movie exists, let’s just live with the movie that existed. There’s no point in us remaking The Wizard of Oz, there’s no point in any of us remaking the classic films. Make something original, because we need more original material. So, no point.”

There is a Harry Potter reboot in the works, this time, to be turned into a TV series set to stream on Max. Although everything is still in early development, with the latest update indicating that the search for a showrunner continues, Columbus isn't attached to the Harry Potter reboot in any way.

The Thursday Murder Club doesn't have a release date, but since filming is expected to wrap this year, the film could premiere sometime in 2025.

Source: The Rest is Entertainment, Deadline