Melissa Leo and Jesse Eisenberg to Star in 'Predisposed'.

Now that this year's Oscar contenders Melissa Leo and Jesse Eisenberg have gotten over the Academy Award hump they're moving on to star in a little indie comedy together!


They've committed to star in a feature-length film called Predisposed, based on a short starring Leo that was featured in Sundance back in 2009. The new movie is a look at the unhealthy relationship between a drug-addicted mother (Leo) and her college-bound son (Eisenberg), set on the day of both his interview at Julliard and her planned arrival in rehab.

Complicating matters, mom's lack of health insurance means she can only be admitted to rehab if she shows up intoxicated; further complicating matters is the feud that erupts between mom's drug dealer Sprinkles (possibly played by Tracy Morgan) and a rival purveyor of recreational pharmaceuticals.

It was penned by Oscar-winning Philadelphia screenwriter Ron Nyswaner and Philip Dorling.


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Oscars: Melissa Leo

What a mother. Hell-to-pay-if-you-cross-her fierce and with more fire in her belly than either of her sons, or certainly that is the way actress Melissa Leo brought Alice Ward to life in David O. Russell's gritty "The Fighter."

Though the fighter in the title is technically a reference to boxer "Irish" Micky Ward, played by Mark Wahlberg, Leo's chain-smoking brassy blond comes at you fists flailing.

While she navigates the hard knocks reality of managing the career of her undercard son, she keeps the rest of her progeny on a short leash including seven ready-to-rumble daughters and the much-favored oldest — Micky's crack-addicted, half-brother-trainer Dicky, which made a winner out of Christian Bale too.

But then Leo has always done her best work portraying women handed the kind of raw deals that destroy, if not for a steely core. It was there in the cold pragmatism of her struggling, illegal immigrant-smuggling single mother in 2008's "Frozen River." It earned the veteran actress her first Oscar nomination.

Though Leo has come to define a working-class ethos, with Alice both a culmination and a breakthrough, the actress also finds the soft underbelly of her character — a mother in charge, but not always in control. That duality was perhaps never more poignantly revealed than when in a rage, Alice marches over to the crack house where Dicky is crashing. Not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle in her outfit, as she spits out her disappointment like nails, the fluffy bedroom slippers on her feet the only clue something's off.

All that toughness went soft as Leo held onto her Oscar. It was a reminder to all the long-suffering character actors out there that it sometimes takes a great fire burning a long time to forge something lasting.


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Melissa Leo wins supporting actress Oscar award

Melissa Leo's Oscar victory for "The Fighter" was expected. Kirk Douglas' touchingly comic presentation of the award wasn't.


The 94-year-old Douglas, aided by a cane and with his speech slowed by a 1996 stroke, took a moment to flirt with co-host Anne Hathaway before announcing the winner Sunday. "Where were you when I was making pictures?" he asked her, receiving air kisses in return.


Then he impishly delayed opening the envelope further, calling it, "The moment we've all been waiting for" several times, and adding, "I will never forget this moment."


Finally, he called Leo's name. The actress dropped to her knee before Douglas as she came on stage, and then directed Michael Douglas' father to "pinch me," which he obligingly did. "You're pretty good looking yourself, what're you doing later on?" she asked him.


Leo, who won for her role as the tough-talking mother of two boxers (Mark Wahlberg, best supporting actor winner Christian Bale), brought a bit of her character to the Oscar stage.


"When I watched Cate two years ago, it looked so (expletive) easy," Leo said, who let slip the F-word as she referred to previous winner Cate Blanchett.


Backstage, she apologized to anyone offended with the word she said was inappropriate for the occasion, adding, "There is a great deal of the English language that is in my vernacular."


David Seidler didn't let her gaffe pass when he accepted the best original screenplay for "The King's Speech."


He thanked the Queen of England "for not putting me in the Tower of London for using the Melissa Leo F-word."


Leo, who was a regular on TV's acclaimed "Homicide: Life on the Street" in her 30s, rebounded in her late 40s and now 50s with two Oscar nominations, one for "The Fighter" and another for "Frozen River" two years ago.


She was the front-runner, and her victory kept 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld of "True Grit" from becoming the third youngest Oscar winner after 10-year-old Tatum O'Neal ("Paper Moon") and 11-year-old Anna Paquin ("The Piano").


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Melissa Leo, Jesse Eisenberg and maybe Tracy Morgan are “Predisposed”

That first Oscar nomination paid lots of dividends for Melissa Leo.


And even though nobody thought that much of her speech, her Oscar win is doing the same.


The Vulture reports that she will play her fellow Oscar nominee Jesse Eisenberg’s mom in “Predisposed.”


It was a short film that made it to Sundance, and here’s Vulture’s pitch for the feature film comedy, “a macabre look at the unhealthy relationship between a drug-addicted mother (Leo) and her college-bound son (Eisenberg), set on the day of both his interview at Julliard and her planned arrival to rehab.” Morgan would play her drug dealer.


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