Channing Tatum, Blake Lively, and Jude Law to star in Steven Soderbergh's 'The Side Effects'

 The countdown has begun. We're quickly running out of opportunities to see Steven Soderbergh's work before he "retires".  The first will be his high octane actioner pic, Haywire, due out in just a couple of weeks. Then we'll have Magic Mike, the male stripper flick every woman in America has been fawning over for months. There was one more, with Soderbergh set to direct a big screen version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., but when casting and budget couldn't get ironed out with the studio, he bailed and took on something far more intriguing. That would be The Side Effects(briefly known as The Bitter Pill), a psycho-thriller dealing with pharmaceuticals and written by Scott Z. Burns(Burn After Reading, Contagion).

ThePlaylist reports that financing has been secured and that casting has begun in earnest. The first three names to join are good enough to make this a film to watch even if Soderbergh and Burns weren't involved. Blake Lively(The Town) will take on the lead role as a woman who turns to prescription drugs to deal with the impending release of her husband from prison. Channing Tatum, who has quickly become a Soderbergh favorite after starring in both Haywire and Magic Mike, will play her  husband, who must not be such a good guy. Jude Law, no longer sporting the gapped teeth he had in Contagion, will play Lively's psychiatrist. Lively was excellent in The Town and arguably the best thing about Green Lantern, so it's good to see her really rolling her previous successes into more challenging stuff.

So with this and HBO's Liberace biopic, Behind the Candelabra, we've got four more Soderbergh movies to enjoy. Haywire opens nationwide on January 20th, while Magic Mike strips down this summer on June 27th.