A year ago at Cannes, Dogme 95 co-founding filmmaking Thomas Vinterberg was stirring up talk with his film “The Hunt.” It went on to win an acting award for Mads Mikkelsen, currently creeping out television audiences in NBC’s “Hannibal.” Drew was a fan of the film, noting that it “infuriates in all the right ways.” This year’s fest brings news for Vinterberg’s next.
The Danish director is set to adapt Thomas Hardy’s novel “Far from the Madding Crowd.” The film is being produced by Fox Searchlight Pictures along with the UK’s DNA Films. Carey Mulligan (currently on screens in “The Great Gatsby”) will star alongside Matthias Schoenaerts.
The novel tells the story of a headstrong farmer in the mid-19th century and her three suitors. It has been filmed a handful of times, most famously by director John Schlesinger in 1967 with Julie Christie and Alan Bates in the roles Mulligan and Schoenaerts will tackle. That film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score.
Interesting note about Schoenaerts: You may not realize he has appeared in back-to-back Oscar-nominated films. He was the lead in 2011’s foreign language nominee “Bullhead” as well as 2012’s live action short nominee “Death of a Shadow.” He was also utterly captivating in (and sadly passed over most of the season for) Jacques Audiard’s “Rust and Bone.”
Both Mulligan and Schoenaerts have films screening at Cannes this year. Mulligan, as noted, is in festival opener “The Great Gatsby” as well as the Coen brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis.” Schoenaerts, meanwhile, is back with “Rust and Bone” co-star Marion Cotillard in Guillaume Canet’s “Blood Ties.”