Isla Fisher and John Wick: Chapter 2‘s Keanu Reeves are on the verge of joining The Starling, a new dramedy from Finnish director Dome Karukoski.
Deadline has the scoop, revealing that both stars are nearing deals to play a married couple, one who soon find their lives plunged into despair following the sudden loss of a child. Matt Harris is the brains behind the hot-tipped script, which once found itself on Hollywood’s Black List of unproduced screenplays. More often than not, once a screenplay is plucked from the Black List, it isn’t long before the property is whipped into shape, and with Fisher and Reeves now circling, don’t be too surprised if The Starling is fast-tracked into production before the year’s end – you know, providing all of the necessary schedules align.
Here’s the synopsis, per Deadline:
A married couple lose a child and the wife goes into a recovery place to help her with overwhelming grief, leaving the husband at home alone. To help aid in her recovery, the husband decides to build a beautiful garden for his wife in their backyard, but as he does he is tormented by an aggressive, black starling. At his wits end with the relentless nature of the bird, he goes to see a veterinarian to find out if there is a humane way to get rid of it. The vet, the husband finds out, used to be a psychiatrist but gave it up to help animals instead. However, the quirky vet begins counseling the husband in a turn that neither of them really expected.
Dome Karukoski, on the other hand, has made a big splash in his native home of Scandinavia after helming Tom of Finland and Heart of a Lion. Assuming the necessary pieces fall into place, The Starling would stand as Karukoski’s English-language debut.
Hot off John Wick: Chapter 2, which continues to perform steadily at the international box office, Keanu Reeves is prepping for a return to sci-fi with Replicas. As for Isla Fisher, the actress was last seen in Tom Ford’s brooding noir thriller, Nocturnal Animals.
