Nice casting and a gooood luck. A few weeks ago it was reported that Cary Joji Fukunaga, the writer director behind one of the most auspicious debut features of the year, “Sin Nombre,” had his next project on track and no it wasn’t his musical with members of the Arcade Fire and Beirut, a sci-fi time travel film or the African child soldier adaptation, “Beasts of No Nation.”
Nope, instead he surprised everyone, including some close associates that we know, by announcing he would now helm an adaptation of the classic Charlotte Bronte novel “Jane Eyre.”
And now he has cast members biting. Apparently Ellen Page was attached at one point, but left even before Fukunaga was interested. Instead, he’s got two excellent actors in negotiations to play the leads, Mia Wasikowska (“Alice In Wonderland,” Gus Van Sant’s “Restless“) and Michael Fassbender (“Inglourious Basterds,” “Hunger”).
Apparently playing up the Gothic qualities of the novel, which follows a young governess in 19th century England, who falls for her employer, filming will start sometime next year, but no due date is given yet.
“Jane Eyre” has been the subject of several film adaptations including most recently by Franco Zeffirelli in 1996 starring Charlotte Gainsbourg. Ruby Films are producing with BBC Films and Focus Features (who distributed “Sin Nombre” in the U.S).
Fukunaga is a bright guy and”Sin Nombre” (a winner at Sundance) is an assured and penetrating debut that is still one of our favorite films of the year, so we’re greatly looking forward to this and anything else he decides to tackle. But we must say that wood nymphs fantasy-sounding musical sounds pretty excellent and could be creepy/amazing in a Brothers Grimm kind of way (ok, we might be extrapolating too much there, but he did call it a “fantastical folk tale,” which obviously excites us).