Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier has bounced back in a big way. Her career came into sharp focus in the early aughts, but was minted later that decade when “After the Wedding” (2006; it made Mads Mikkelsen a household name) and “In a Better World” (2010) both scored Academy Award nominations for Best Foreign Language Film (“In A Better World” would win). She had done Hollywood in between (the underrated “Things We Lost In The Fire”; 2007), but she was poised for huge things when Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper had agreed to star in “Serena” just as both their stars were going supernova (Lawrence was already an Academy Award winner before the film’s release). Delayed several times over, “Serena” limped into theaters with months of “troubled production” rumors and bad buzz and became an expensive box office flop—the kind that usually damages the reputation of a female filmmaker often not given the same amnesty with mistakes as their counterparts.
READ MORE: Director Susanne Bier Says ‘The Night Manager’ Season 2 In The Works
But Bier pivoted to TV and struck a massive home run with “The Night Manager,” starring Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, and Elizabeth Debicki. A critical darling and hit for the BBC and AMC who aired it in the U.S., its crackling intrigue soon put her on the kinds of lists that offered her as a strong candidate to take over the James Bond series. Of course, that never happened, but it didn’t need to, Bier’s blip was just that.
Now, the filmmaker has a Netflix awards contender coming in December (“Bird Box” with Sandra Bullock) and has just signed on for another TV project, and a prestigious peak TV one at that. Bier has signed on to direct Nicole Kidman in HBO’s limited series “The Undoing.” Written by venerable TV veteran David E. Kelley (“The Practice,” “Ally McBeal,”) the creator and writer behind “Big Little Lies,” HBO’s previous limited series hit starring Kidman, the series is an adaptation of Jean Hanff Korelitz’s book “You Should Have Known, The Undoing.”
The novel centers on (via Amazon) a woman (Kidman) who is living the only life she ever wanted for herself. She’s a successful therapist on the brink of publishing her first book, has a devoted husband and young son who attends an elite private school in New York City. Weeks before her book is published, a chasm opens in her life: a violent death, a missing husband, and, in the place of a man Grace thought she knew, only a chain of terrible revelations. Left behind in the wake of a spreading and very public disaster, and horrified by how she has failed to heed her own advice, Grace must dismantle one life and create another for her child and herself.
“Big Little Lies” was a tremendous hit for HBO, earning 16 Emmy Awards nominations and won eight including Best Outstanding Limited Series and Best Actress for Kidman. At the Golden Globes, Kidman would win again, and the series took Best Television Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television (six noms total, four wins). She would also gain a SAG award for her performance on the show as well (season two will arrive in 2019 on HBO with Kidman on board).
“The Night Manager” earned dozens of awards too including three Golden Globe wins (Best Performance nods for all of its three leads), three Emmy Award wins out of eight nominations (including Best Director for Bier), and three BAFTA wins from seven nominations. Consider this a kind of supergroup for prestige television. Bier will direct all six episodes of the series, the same length as the “The Night Manager.” HBO is hoping, no, likely banking, to repeat this kind of success. [Deadline]