David Lowery has a new film in works with Tilda Swinton who is on the spotlight.
“Death in his hands” – described as an “anarchic whodunnit” and “a psychological thriller of another world” – is adapted by LowerY (“A Ghost Story”, “The Green Knight”) of the cult novel by Oltessa Moshfegh (“My Year of Rest and Relaxation”).
Research films, the oscored power behind “The Power of the Dog”, “The King’s Speech” and “One Life” (and, on the TV front, “Slow Horses” and “Heartstopper”), is on board to produce.
In “Death in Her Hands”, walking in the woods near her new house, the recent widow Vesta Gul (Swinton) falls on a scary handwritten note: “His name was Magda. No one will ever know who killed her. It was not me. Here is his corpse. ” Except that there is no body. No blood. Necarré by the death of her husband and armed only with a camera, her dog Charlie, and her lively imagination, Gul becomes obsessed with the discovery of the identity and destiny of Magda. While the synopsis beds it: “While its inner world begins to eclipse reality, the mystery of Magda threatens the grip of Vesta on its own life – until, in a culminating point of the opera, we realize that the death of Magda can finally allow Vesta to live.”
The film will be produced by Iain Canning, Emile Sherman and Jeanie Igoe; Executive producers are Simon Gillis and Ann Phillips. Cross City Films, the internal sales arm of See-Saw, is associated with WME Independent to obtain funding in Cannes.
“I am a devoted fan of Ottessa Moshfegh, and the opportunity to translate the death into his hands ” on the big screen was, in some respects, a subterfuge for having spent a lot of time being obsessed with his prose. But now the cunning is in place!” said LowerY, currently stationed on “Mother Mary”.
“The script generated by the novel will soon become a film, and I suddenly be aware more than ever than the adaptation of this particular work represents a sly challenge (whoever has read the novel will understand why)! But I am ready for that, and I am embarrassing to have wonderful collaborators by my side: the whole team of See-Saw, Jeanie, and of course, the Swinton of Tilda.
Addition of preserves and Sherman producers: “David Lowery is a master of creating strike stories and atmospheric, and there is nobody better to bring the obsessive and brilliant novel by Ottessa Moshfegh on the screen. We cannot wait for the public to enter the world it creates and be swept away by the history of Vesta, played by the knitting of incomparable, magnetic and endless and understandable Swinton.
Swinton is replaced by Hamilton Hoddell, CAA and Peikoff Mahan. Lowery is replaced by WME and Victoria Cook at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz.
