After showcasing some surprising dramatic chops in last year’s Gone Girl, Tyler Perry has boarded biopic Brain on Fire, starring alongside Chloe Grace Moretz.
Based on Susannah Cahalan’s New York Times bestselling memoir Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, the award-tipped drama will center on Susannah (Moretz), a rising journalist at The New York Post who inexplicably falls victim to an unknown illness that causes her to hear voices, hallucinate and become violent. Terrified but unable to prevent herself from descending further into insanity, Susannah faces the possibility that she’ll never recover – until one doctor provides a diagnosis that may hold the key to a cure.
Perry is set to take on the supporting role of Richard, who oversees Susannah at The New York Post and shocked to see her condition transform her.
Thomas Mann (Me & Earl & the Dying Girl), Jenny Slate (Obvious Child), Richard Armitage (The Hobbit) and Carrie-Ann Moss (Memento) are all signed on to play supporting roles in the pic, which is intended as an awards season vehicle for Moretz.
Brain on Fire is currently shooting in Vancouver, with plans to release next year.
An award-winning memoir and instant New York Times bestseller that goes far beyond its riveting medical mystery, Brain on Fire is the powerful account of one woman’s struggle to recapture her identity.
When twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a hospital room, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak, she had no memory of how she’d gotten there. Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: at the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened?
In a swift and breathtaking narrative, Susannah tells the astonishing true story of her descent into madness, her family’s inspiring faith in her, and the lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn’t happen.
“A fascinating look at the disease that . . . could have cost this vibrant, vital young woman her life” (People), Brain on Fire is an unforgettable exploration of memory and identity, faith and love, and a profoundly compelling tale of survival and perseverance that is destined to become a classic.
