Now that principal photography has been slated to get underway next week – April 4, to be exact – Fox Searchlight is beefing up its cast for upcoming adaptation, My Cousin Rachel.
With Rachel Weisz, Sam Claflin and Holliday Grainger already on board, Variety is reporting that Game of Thrones stalwart Iain Glen and stage actor Simon Russell Beale have agreed to star in the feature film, itself based on the epynomous novel penned by Daphne du Maurier.
The movie is being adapted for the silver screen by director Roger Michell (Notting Hill, Enduring Love), who expressed his own excitement about steering du Maurier’s “detailed, dark, sexy and cinematic” story into theaters. For Michell, “so many really great films have grown out of the works of Daphne Du Maurier: ‘Don’t Look Now,’ ‘The Birds,’ ‘Rebecca’… .and here’s another of her classics which is at once detailed, dark, sexy, cinematic and full of surprises. I look forward to bringing this thrilling story to the screen with such a brilliant cast.”
Indeed, My Cousin Rachel has graced cinemas before when, in 1952, screen icons Olivia de Havilland and Richard Burton assumed the central parts. Orbiting around the plight of a young Englishman, du Maurier’s romantic novel imagines a scenario where our protagonist plots revenge against his mesmerizing cousin, only to find himself falling under her beguiling charm.
Kevin Loader and Anita Overland are attached to produce on behalf of Free Range Films, and given production has been slated to begin on April 4, expect filming to continue on Michell’s adaptation into the summer, with England and Italy acting as the two primary locations.