If you’re an actor making your feature directorial debut, it doesn’t hurt to surround yourself with really good talent. Paul Dano is doing just that with this currently filming “Wildlife” starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan, and Kirsten Dunst has put together some excellent actors for her turn behind the camera with “The Bell Jar.”
Patrica Arquette, Bel Powley (“The Diary Of A Teenage Girl”) and Stacy Martin (“Nymphomaniac”) have joined Dakota Fanning and Jesse Plemons in the adaptation of Sylvia Plath’s novel. The story will follow a young woman who moves to the big city, and grapples with mental illness (Plath would take her own life a month after the book was published). Here’s the book synopsis:
The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under — maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther’s breakdown with such intensity that Esther’s insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.
Dunst is co-writing the script with Nellie Kim, and everything is coming together for filming to begin in early 2017. The recipe for success is certainly here, and we’re eager to see what Dunst and co. manage to make out of the iconic book. [Screen Daily]