Tag: Jude Law

  • Michelle Williams, Jude Law team up for period drama ‘Firebrand’ 

    By PTI

    LOS ANGELES: Michelle Williams and Jude Law are teaming up for “Firebrand”, a psychological horror tale set in the bloody English Tudor court.

    The film, directed by Karim Ainouz, will focus on Queen Catherine Parr, the sixth and final wife of Henry VIII, and the only one to avoid banishment or death.

    While Williams will essay the role of Catherine, Law will play Henry VIII, her notorious husband.

    Ainouz, known for “The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao”, will direct the film from a script by “Killing Eve” writers Jessica Ashworth and Henrietta Ashworth.

    According to Deadline, “Firebrand” is told through Catherine’s singular point-of-view of the psychological horror of living with a monster — and the remarkable will to not only survive, but thrive.

    The official logline of the film reads: “By the time young Catherine Parr (Williams) married the deteriorating, increasingly despotic King Henry VIII (Law), she had no assurances of a happy marriage; in fact, she had no assurances of surviving this marriage at all.

    Of her predecessors, two were thrown out, one died in childbirth and two were beheaded.

    While Catherine tried to keep her head about her to navigate the politics of her position, she brought a secret agenda.

    “She was Protestant, believed it her duty to marry Henry, for it would be the only position in which she could convert him — and the kingdom — from his pro-Catholic position. That faith was tested when the church resisted granting his divorce from his first wife so he could marry Anne Boleyn, who would later be beheaded. With arrests, torture, and executions of Protestants on the rise, Catherine invited a dangerous game that would leave one of them dead before long.”

    Ainouz, the Brazilian-born filmmaker, describes Parr as a “ferociously brilliant, enlightened, and emancipated woman whom I am inspired by deeply, a woman who has been largely disregarded, or certainly under-represented in English Tudor history”.

    While much is known about Henry VIII’s tyrannical reign, the King himself, and about those who perished at his hands, the director said “Firebrand” will offer a modernistic look at the classic trope of the woman trapped in a castle with a monster.

    “Henry was a most interesting person, but he was uber-violent, which was in tune with the times. Jude will not play him as the cliched fat man eating the turkey leg. Jude got how complex this guy was, not a loveable character but as a most powerful man of his time. And Michelle immediately came to mind. I so admire her choices, going back to Brokeback Mountain, and there is something fascinating about her each time I rediscover her in a performance,” Ainouz said about his lead cast.

    Williams was recently seen in “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” and Law will reprise his role of Albus Dumbledore in “The Secrets of Dumbledore”, the third chapter in the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise from J K Rowling’s “Harry Potter” universe.

  • Jude Law, Marion Cotillard and more join Kate Winslet in ‘Lee’

    By PTI

    LOS ANGELES: Actors Jude Law, Marion Cottilard, Andrea Riseborough and Josh O’Connor will feature alongside Oscar winner Kate Winslet in the upcoming biographical drama movie “Lee”.

    The film is based on the life of Lee Miller, the Vogue cover model turned World War II correspondent.

    Winslet will play Miller who had traded a glamorous career as a Vogue cover model and muse to artists like Man Ray for a dangerous career as a WWII photographer.

    She chronicled the fighting on the allied front lines and exposed the atrocities that Hitler’s Nazi Germany perpetrated on Jews in concentration camps.

    Law has been cast as Roland Penrose, an artist and poet who would eventually fall in love with Miller; and O’Connor as Miller’s son, Anthony Penrose, as per Deadline.

    Riseborough will star as Audrey Withers, the editor of British Vogue as a close friend of Miller, while Cotillard will play Solange D’Ayen, the fashion director of French Vogue.

    Liz Hannah has penned the screenplay, adapting it from the book “The Lives of Lee Miller” by Anthony Penrose.

    Winslet is also producing the film along with Troy Lum and Andrew Mason of Hopscotch Features, as well as Rocket Science and Finola Dwyer.

    The film is expected to start production early next year.