We already know that director Joe Wright (Hanna) is taking on Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel Anna Karenina as his next project with Keira Knightley (Never Let Me Go) in the titular character, Jude Law (Repo Men) as Anna’s Count husband Karenin, and Aaron Johnson (Nowhere Boy) as Anna’s lover, Vronsky.
According to Cinema Blend, Wright is pursuing an Atonement cast reunion with James McAvoy, Saoirse Ronan, and Benedict Cumberbatch. Also, Boardwalk Empire‘s Kelly Macdonald is officially attached to the film.
IMDB has yet to post the official cast, but The Playlist says that McAvoy may not be able to commit since he’s a very busy new father. Also, Ronan is “waiting to settle a deal for ‘Hobbit.’” However, while Wright is working his directorial magic, the script is penned by Oscar winning scribe, Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love).
For those of you who don’t know the novel, Screen Junkies reveals, “When the book was first released, their affair [between Anna & Vronsky] was deemed very illicit by Russian society.” This could serve as an opportunity for Wright to revamp the period piece.
Back in 2004, Oprah Winfrey raved about the novel, and the L.A. Times says as a result, “Suddenly people who wouldn’t otherwise be inclined to Russian melodrama could be seen lugging the encyclopedia-sized novel everywhere they went.”
We can only wonder, what can Wright bring to the “epic love story that filmmakers from a previous generation couldn’t?” The website also recalls more past adaptations like the 1985 TV movie version which starred Jacqueline Bisset, as well as Sophie Morceau in a “theatrical film in 1997.”
However, Wright told 24 Frames that “a key difference with his and Stoppard’s version [the two have been meeting in recent weeks to hash out the story] has to do with expanding beyond the scope of the title character…The Garbo version focused very much on Anna’s story… And what Tom has written is a kind of multi-stranded portrait of a community… It affords me an opportunity to learn not just about literature but also human emotion and the state of drama, fidelity, and love.”
For more details on our last article about this in-development project, check out this link. What do you think about these casting decisions for such an important piece of literature? Do you think Hollywood is reinventing too many classics?
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