Fresh off her Oscar-nominated turn in immigration drama Brooklyn, Saoirse Ronan has signed on to topline On Chesil Beach, a long-gestating adaptation of the Ian McEwan-penned novella.
Given her past success with McEwan, the actress is a resoundingly logical choice for the lead role. At 13, Ronan became one of the youngest Best Supporting Actress nominees of all time for her performance in Atonement, another McEwan adaptation that was up for seven Academy Award nominations in total back in 2008.
This time around, she’ll play Florence, a young woman celebrating her wedding to Edward, with whom she’s entirely smitten, on the Dorset coast. Over the course of their wedding night, in 1962, the pair grow increasingly aware of their newfound duties as husband and wife.
Dominic Cooke, director of The Hollow Crown, will be at the helm for the intimate two-hander, which rolls cameras this fall. No distributor is currently attached, but given Ronan’s ever-growing star power, On Chesil Beach will undoubtedly be snapped up fairly fast.
Though a male lead has yet to be cast, Ronan coming aboard marks a huge step forward for the project, which has been in various stages of development for years. At one point it was at Focus Features, and StudioCanal was also once involved with trying to get the film off the ground, though both studios have fallen off at this point. Directors Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Spectre) and Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) had also both circled On Chesil Beach before Cooke locked down directorial duties.
The Amazon synopsis for McEwan’s novella can be found below:
In 1962, Florence and Edward celebrate their wedding in a hotel on the Dorset coast. Yet as they dine, the expectation of their marital duties weighs over them. And unbeknownst to both, the decisions they make this night will resonate throughout their lives. With exquisite prose, Ian McEwan creates in On Chesil Beach a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.
Published: Feb 17, 2016 03:02 pm