Winslet Game for `Mildred Pierce'

Kate Winslet is attached to "Mildred Pierce," a miniseries adaptation based on the James M. Cain novel that Todd Haynes is writing and directing. Sources said that HBO is the lead contender to get the mini, but payweb sources said no deal has been struck.

Cain's tale was famously turned into a 1945 film that won Joan Crawford an Oscar for the lead role of a housewife whose husband leaves her, so to support her children and keep her house, she works turns her small home-based pie-baking business into a successful restaurant enterprise, and along the way gets tangled in ill-advised romance and murder.

The involvement of Winslet--right after her Oscar-winning performance in "The Reader" and her work in "Revolutionary Road"--underscores how much paywebs like HBO have become prestige venues for films that might vanish as theatrical releases, a fact underscored by the success of "Grey Gardens," which garnered Emmy noms for Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange.

Haynes directed "I'm Not There," "Safe" and "Far From Heaven."