If Samantha Morton has anything, she has street cred. You’re not going to find any Farrelly Brothers comedies or Jerry Bruckheimer spectacles on her resume. Sure, she was in “Minorty Report,” but that was a matter of Spielberg coming up to her level, not the other way around. So, when Morton signs up for “The Mulo,” playing estranged twin sisters named Brady and Bess, who join forces to find Brady’s small child who has been taken away by an evil gypsy curse, we trust that this film might be more than the generic “supernatural thriller” label the production company, Ipso Facto Films, is going with.
The UK/Canada co-production will be directed by Matthew Thompson, whose previous film “Dummy” (not to be confused with the Adrien Brody ventriloquism vehicle of the same name) was a 2008 British drama starring Aaron Johnson (“Kick-Ass,” “Nowhere Boy”). Thompson also directed the National Geographic Channel documentary “March of the Dinosaurs,” which adds up to a rather eclectic background for any filmmaker (a gritty drama, an animated dinosaur doc), but one that feels oddly ideal for the director of a thriller set in a superstitious gypsy community in rural England.
It is great to see Morton taking on roles, as she has not appeared on screen coming on three years. Her last performance was as the mourning widow in Oren Moverman’s excellent film, “The Messenger,” and now she has four movies on the way. In addition to ‘The Mulo,’ Morton will appear in David Cronenberg’s “Cosmopolis,” the cowardly retitled “John Carter” (formerly “John Carter of Mars”), and “Decoding Annie Parker.”
The project is now up for grabs at the American Film Market. No start date has been set just yet. [ScreenDaily]
