Nicole Holofcener has signed to write and direct a movie about a group of New York women who live in the same apartment building, with Catherine Keener in final negotiations to play the main character.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the script was completed ahead of the writers strike, with the project set to go into production in first-quarter 2008 to beat a potential actors strike.

The movie, still-untitled, will center on a set of neighbors in the New York building, including a woman (Keener) who lives next door to a cantankerous elderly woman. It explores the interactions between Keener's character, who owns the woman's apartment, the woman and her two granddaughters, in what's described as an examination of "life, death and real estate."

The movie will be set and shot in New York, the first Holofcener project based in the city since 1996's Walking and Talking.