Further to the recent news that the talented trio behind 2011’s Young Adult are preparing to re-team on a new project, it has now been announced that the film due to reunite Academy Award winners Charlize Theron and Diablo Cody, and Academy Award nominee Jason Reitman, will be Tully – a comedy about motherhood. Settling back into familiar positions – Theron will star, Cody will write and Reitman will direct.
The creative trio will also each produce Tully, along with Helen Eastbrook and Mason Novick. It is set to be packaged for sale to international markets at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, and will be heading for a late summer shoot, in Vancouver. As expected from a Diablo Cody script, the film will centre on a woman trying to get to grips with a challenging life situation.
“Marlo (Theron) – a mother of three, including a newborn – is gifted a night nanny by her brother. Hesitant to the extravagance at first, Marlo comes to form a unique bond with the thoughtful, surprising, and sometimes challenging young nanny, named Tully.”
Leaping from the page regarding this synopsis is the question of who will fill the role of Tully. Firstly, the gender of the character is not specified, and this detail is also not immediately obvious from the character name. If Charlize Theron is playing the role of Marlo, then the person cast as Tully will need to have a very specific chemistry with the actress in order to make what sounds to be a very intimate family portrait work. The obvious suggestion would be Ellen Page, who so brilliantly delivered the work of Diablo Cody in 2007’s Juno.
The other point is that, if the character of Tully is indeed female, then we have a female-centred, female-led film, featuring a great deal of screen time in which women will be talking to each other about all manner of subjects – not just men. This is a refreshing, exciting prospect indeed, being such a rare occurrence in cinema.
As Tully heads into the international market place, we can expect to hear more casting announcements soon – as this film is certainly one on which to keep an eye.
