Phoebe Dynevor to Play Daphne Du Maurier in 'The Housekeeper'
Phoebe Dynevor as Clarice Cliff in 'The Colour Room'
Caspian Films
The 2024 American Film Market in Las Vegas begins November 5, when everyone's attention will be focused elsewhere, but that doesn't mean the deals that ensure next year's movie productions can start filming aren't going to be struggling to find investors. This is the crossroads of blockbuster and indie, where packages are assembled and marketed. It's primarily American films for the American markets; however, a few British-studded dramas always appear. This year includes a feature-length 1930s-set period piece that's a new spin on the classic Daphne Du Maurier novel Rebecca.
Titled The Housekeeper, the film is based on Dame Rose Tremain's short story of the same name from her recent collection of short stories, The American Lover. Tremain sold the producers on a film adaptation of her story from a fleshed-out, full-length novel version, an adaptation she would write. The script is done, the cast is set, and the expanded novel version will probably be out close to the film's debut. Now, all the movie needs is a production studio to snap it up.
The film's conceit is that is portrays the events in Du Maurier's life that led her to write her famous book, though we should note the story is entirely fictional. Tremain's short story focuses on a young woman who has a brief affair with the author only to pick up a copy of the newly published Rebecca and find herself as a character in the story.
The cover art for 'The American Lover' collection of short stories by Rose Tremain that contains "The Housekeeper"
Fillingham Weston Assocs.
Here's the story's synopsis:
'The Housekeeper' is set in the mystic, brooding, and wild landscape of Cornwall, the rugged Atlantic foot of England, where Danni, the housekeeper at Manderville Hall — a grand and historic house owned by the wealthy and widowed Lord DeWithers — falls prey to the glance of a young and beautiful visitor, the novelist Daphne Du Maurier. For one, their affair is an all-consuming love, for the other an intoxicating realization of her secret longings.
The cast is certainly one that will have studios taking notice. Bridgerton's Phoebe Dynevor will star as the author, with American actor Uma Thurman (Kill Bill) as Danni. Anthony Hopkins (Those About to Die) co-stars as the widowed Lord DeWithers. Richard Eyre (Notes on a Scandal) is set to direct.
“Rose Tremain’s story grapples with love, fear, fiction, desire, ambition, death and legacy — perhaps epic, whilst providing us with the delicacy of most complex, nuanced characters and unexpected shifts in audience sympathy,” Eyre said. “The cast and I hold in our palm a story as rich and turbulent as the landscape that it inhabits, with Manderville Hall holding secrets and emotional intrigue within its historic walls.”
The Housekeeper plans to start filming in early 2025.
