Quite the cast has quietly formed around the unannounced project “Eileen” from “Lady Macbeth” director William Oldroyd. While never announced formally through the trades, at least not its cast and director, NJ.com has revealed all the details of the project, which have been confirmed by Jonathan Busch, Mayor of the Borough of Metuchen in New Jersey, where the film is currently shooting and has been for weeks.
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Based on the 2016 novel by Ottessa Moshfegh, “Eileen” is currently in production all over New Jersey and stars Anne Hathaway, Thomasin Mckenzie (“Last Night in Soho,” “Jojo Rabbit”), Shea Whigham (” Boardwalk Empire,” “Joker”) and features the work of” The Power of the Dog” cinematographer Ari Wegner.
“Eileen” is a female-led crime drama and follows a troubled 24-year-old woman who works in a boys’ prison in the 1960s. The project was announced in development back in 2016, but there have not been updates since.
Busch echoed those exact plot details on Twitter, writing, “The movie centers around a young woman who works in a boys’ prison outside of Boston & is somehow pulled into a bizarre crime & is expected to be released in about a year.” This also lines up with the synopsis available on IMDB that describes the film about “a woman’s friendship with a new co-worker at [a] prison facility where she works [that] takes a sinister turn.”
McKenzie is said to have the title role, which would fit with the characters’ ages in the novel and the previous descriptions. Set photos definitely confirm the film has kept the period setting.
Here’s an Amazon synopsis of the book (which admittedly doesn’t tell you much).
Played out against the snowy landscape of coastal New England in the days leading up to Christmas, young Eileen’s story is told from the gimlet-eyed perspective of the now much older narrator. Creepy, mesmerizing, and sublimely funny, in the tradition of Shirley Jackson and early Vladimir Nabokov, this powerful debut novel enthralls and shocks and introduces one of the most original new voices in contemporary literature.
This synopsis from the perspective of the lead character is more revealing.
So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twenty-four years old then and had a job that paid fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it now as what it really was for all intents and purposes—a prison for boys. This is the story of how I disappeared.
Oldroyd came to much acclaim in 2016 with the aforementioned “Lady Macbeth,” which was the big breakout role for Florence Pugh. He still has several other projects in development, a TV adaptation of Ann Patchett’s novel “State of Wonder” from “How To Talk To Girls At Parties” screenwriter Philippa Goslett, a feature-length adaptation of “The Jealousy Man,” based on the recently released novel by Norwegian crime author Jo Nesbø for Amazon Studios and the crime thriller “Body Cross” for Focus Features. File under Most Anticipated for 2023 or late 2022?