The Hollywood Reporter has learned Hilary Swank and Michael Shannon have climbed aboard What They Had, a new drama from writer-director Elizabeth Chomko.
They’ll join Robert Forster, Blythe Danner and Taissa Farmiga in a project that centers on a woman who circles back to her hometown in order to care for her ailing mother. Production is due to get underway in Chicago next week, March 22nd, ahead of a release sometime in 2018. In its journey to the starting line, What They Had accrued a host of producing support, too, including Bill Holderman (A Walk In The Woods) and Albert Berger (Little Miss Sunshine), so it’s exciting to hear the news that Chomko has matched that back-of-house talent with a host of top-tier acting talent.
Character details are being kept under lock and key for now, but THR notes that Swank has signed on to play “a woman who must fly back to her hometown when her Alzheimer’s-stricken mother, played by Danner, wanders into a blizzard. The return home forces her to confront her past.” Alzheimer’s is a very real, very crippling disease that affects millions of people the world over – both directly and indirectly – so there’s potential here to create a powerful drama that has the ability to enthrall audiences.
Filming on What They Had will begin on March 22nd in Chicago. Beyond that, Swank has a part to play in Steven Soderbergh’s all-star heist drama Logan Lucky, while Shannon has three very different, very intriguing dramas incubating in development: The Current War, Horse Soldiers and Guillermo del Toro’s long-anticipated Cold War fantasy drama, The Shape of Water.
