EXCLUSIVE: Oscar nominee Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything) will star with Bridgerton actor Jonathan Bailey in comedy Maria, we can reveal.

Independent Entertainment will launch sales in Cannes on the project, which hails from Benediction and Small Axe producer EMU Films. Simon Amstell is writing and directing.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and On The Basis Of Sex actress Jones will star in the title role as a young woman with a history of running from reality. Struggling to accept her age, her boyfriend’s love and her father’s indifference, Maria spots an opportunity to feel young, free and desirable at her father’s wedding, where she meets Raffy, her new stepbrother. Their obvious, if inconvenient, sexual chemistry is made worse by the news that her father has been diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter) will play Maria’s father. Bailey will play Maria’s boyfriend Eddy. Amstell’s follow-up to his sophomore feature Benjamin is due to shoot in the UK and US in fall 2022.

Louise Palmkvist Hansen will produce for EMU Films. Amstell will also serve as executive producer, alongside EMU Films’ Michael Elliott, Jim Mooney and Walli Ullah, and Cora Palfrey and Sarah Lebutsch from Independent Entertainment.

Amstell said: “I’m incredibly excited to begin shooting Maria this year with Felicity Jones. Our hope is that making a film about our culture’s fear of aging and death will be an absolute sensation”.

Source : deadline.com

EXCLUSIVE: Felicity Jones is set to star in and produce New Regency’s upcoming film Blood Mother, sources tell Deadline. Kelly Marcel and Steve Zissis will also produce the project alongside Jones’ brother, Alex Jones. The film is written by Zissis and is based on an original story by Marcel and Zissis.

The film follows an Oxford professor who discovers her baby is inhuman and finds herself doing the unimaginable to keep him alive.

Best know her roles in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Theory of Everything, which earned her an Oscar nom, Jones was most recently seen George Clooney’s Midnight Sky. Prior to that she starred in The Aeronauts and On the Basis of Sex.

Marcel is coming off the global hit Venom: Let There Be Carnage, which she wrote; it delivered the year’s biggest domestic box office opening. Marcel also has a story by credit on Disney’s Cruella and also penned Saving Mr. Banks, as well as the adaptation of Universal’s Fifty Shades of Grey. On the TV front, she has the series The Changeling at Apple TV+, based on the novel by Victor LaValle, which will star LaKeith Stanfield.

Zissis’ past credits include Togetherness and Cruella.

Jones is represented by WME, Independent Talent and Peikhoff Mahan. Zissis is represented by Artists First, United Agents & A3.

Source : deadline.com

Political thriller Borderland has moved production to early 2022. Following an Irish paramilitary avenging his wife’s death, the film stars John Boyega, Felicity Jones, and Jodie Turner-Smith, and has directors Tom and Charles Guard attached. Production kicks off in the new year in Glasgow and casting director Olivia Scott-Webb is attached.

Source : backstage.com