For her first film since directing Marvel’s “The Marvels” in 2023, filmmaker Nia DaCosta is pivoting hard in the opposite direction. Instead of another tentpole, she’s chosen something far more intimate and personal: “Hedda,” a contemporary reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 classic “Hedda Gabler.”
At the second annual Storyhouse Screenwriting Festival in Dublin, DaCosta explained the urgency she felt in returning to her long-gestating project: “I called my team, and I said that I need to make ‘Hedda,’” she recalled. “I had written it years ago, and I said that I really needed to go back to that because this isn’t fulfilling in the way I need it to be.”
It’s a striking about-face for the director, whose career began with intimate, character-driven dramas like “Little Woods” before moving into larger-scale work with “Candyman” and Marvel. Where spectacle dominated her recent projects, “Hedda” offers stripped-down dramatic power and a chance to reassert her voice.
The film boasts a formidable cast led by Tessa Thompson, alongside Imogen Poots, Tom Bateman, Nicholas Pinnock, Nina Hoss, Finbar Lynch, Mirren Mack, Jamael Westman, Saffron Hocking, and Kathryn Hunter. DaCosta serves as writer and director, with producers including DaCosta, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Gabrielle Nadig, and Thompson. Executive producers are Michael S. Constable, Brad Pitt, and Kishori Rajan.
A fresh yet faithful take on Ibsen’s play, “Hedda” follows its title character, a woman stifled by her marriage and trapped in a domestic life that feels alien to her. When an ex-lover reenters the picture, passions and resentments collide, pulling her into an impossible struggle between freedom, duty, and self-destruction.
Amazon MGM Studios will release “Hedda” in select theaters on October 22.
