Boasting an eye-catching performance from Quvenzhané Wallis – one which propelled her Hushpuppy smack bang onto Hollywood’s radar – and a beautiful yet mystical aesthetic, Benh Zeitlin’s Beast of the Southern Wild proved to be one of the delightful sleeper hits of 2012, snagging the youngest ever Oscar nomination for Wallis in the process.
Three years later and now the director is primed to step back behind the camera for the tentatively titled Wendy, with Antigua Observer noting that a casting call has been issued in the search of a young girl, one who will presumably play the protagonist of his next creative venture.
While we would love nothing more than to see Zeitlin reunite with Quvenzhané Wallis for Wendy, the filmmaker’s next outing is decidedly different from Beasts, following the story of a young, curious girl who is kidnapped into the throes of a tribal war. Part adventure film, part love story, Wendy – or whichever title Zeitlin settles for – has an innate connection with the ecosystem, and here’s what the director had to share about the project when it was first announced two years ago.
“The new film is about a young girl who gets kidnapped onto a hidden ecosystem where a tribal war is raging over a form of pollen that breaks the relationship between aging and time,” Zeitlin said at the time. “It follows a friendship-love story-adventure of her and a joyous, reckless, pleasure-mongering young boy as they swirl in and out of youth and as the ecosystem around them spirals toward destruction. We’re working on it all day every day, but as all psychotic adventures go, you know where your destination is but not how long it’s going to take to get there.”
According to Antigua Observer, the director has already sent out the casting call for the lead part, with plans to begin shooting in the country before long. Working within a limited budget, Wendy flies in the face of blockbuster convention and will instead center around a core group of people.
“It’s not a hundred million-dollar movie coming in with airplanes and giant everything. It’ll be a small group of people building out of scrap metal and things we find, and the interesting thing is that even though we’re such a small production the reach could be very, very far.”
No word yet on a release date or even window, but given how special Beasts of the Southern Wild proved to be, we’re excited to see Zeitlin’s Wendy in due time.
