Mark Romanek has built quite the impressive, mainly British, cast for his upcoming sci-fi thriller “Never Let Me Go.” Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, actresses Charlotte Rampling, Nathalie Richard, Andrea Riseborough and Sally Hawkins have all jumped on board as shooting gets under way in the U.K. Damn, this cast is near impeccable at the moment.
Hawkins and Riseborough were recently together in Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” where Hawkins put in an amazing performance that won her a Golden Globe. A possible contender for that award this year is the previously announced “Never Let Me Go” cast member Carey Mulligan, who continues to thrive off the massive wraps and Oscar buzz from her performance in the upcoming “An Education.”
Add to that BAFTA winning Andrew Garfield (“Boy A,” the upcoming “The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus”), Keira Knightley (umm, “Pirates Of The Carribean”?) and the acclaimed French pair of Rampling and Richard – ladies and gentlemen, we may be installed for a treat.
Director Romanek agrees (like he has a choice): “From the moment I finished the novel, it became my dream to film it. [The author’s] conception is so daring, so eerie and beautiful. Alex Garland’s adaptation is sensitive and precise. The cast is perfect, the crew superb.” Garland (“28 Days Later”, “Sunshine”) adapted the film from the critically acclaimed novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, who is also on board as a producer along with Garland.
A spoiler-free review of the ‘Never Let Me Go’ novel from Time Magazine, where it stands in a list of top 100 novels since 1923, reads:
Kathy, Tommy and Ruth [who will be played by Garfield, Knightley and Mulligan] are students at Hailsham, a very exclusive, very strange English private school. They are treated well in every respect, but as they grow older they come to realize that there is a secret that haunts their lives: Their teachers regard them with fear and pity, and they don’t know why. Once they learn the secret it is already far, far too late for them to save themselves. Set in a darkling alternate-universe version of England, and told with dry-eyed, white-knuckled restraint, Never Let Me Go is an improbable masterpiece, a science fiction horror story written as high tragedy by a master literary stylist. It’s postmodern in its conception, but Ishiguro isn’t playing games or chasing trends: The human drama of Never Let Me Go, its themes of atrocity and acceptance, are timeless and, sadly, permanent.
ScreenDaily reports that a nine week shoot for ‘Never Let Me Go’ began this week in the U.K. with backing from DNA Films, Fox Searchlight and Film4. Hopefully, in time for a late 2009/early 2010 release?
