Recently seen in two of the biggest films of 2021, Oscar contenders “Nightmare Alley” from director Guillermo del Toro and Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up,” in-demand Oscar-winning Australian actress Cate Blanchett has now been selected to lead a new film from Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar.
READ MORE: The Essentials: The Films Of Pedro Almodóvar
Variety reveals that Blanchett has joined “A Manual For Cleaning Women,” one of two English-language projects Almodóvar has been developing and talking up in the past few months. Pairing the actress with yet another high-caliber filmmaker potentially gives the two another awards caliber film on the way.
From a script Almodóvar written in Spanish and later translated to English, the new project is an adaptation of Lucia Berlin’s short story collection that features 43 stories about women in varying types of demanding occupations. From the sounds of things, it will allow the actress to sink her teeth into another character-driven collaboration with one of cinema’s finest directors.
Producing team for “A Manual For Women” will include Blanchett’s production company Dirty Films for New Republic Pictures.
Not mentioned in the report is who Blanchett will play or if the talented actress will be handling multiple roles in the drama, given it’s an adaptation of a group of short stories from Berlin. They could also go the anthology route as well.
Almodóvar, of course, won a screenwriting Academy award back in 2003 for “Talk To Her” and most recently released “Parallel Mothers” starring Penélope Cruz, earning her a Best Actress award at last year’s Venice Film Festival.
Blanchett completed production on Eli Roth’s video game adaptation “Borderlands” last year, where she plays Lillith and was being eyed for a role in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis.” It’s unclear at this time when the former will be released in theaters by Lionsgate.
