In what can only be described as an incredibly smart career move, Game Of Thrones star Natalie Dormer is moving into the realm of generating her own material, as it’s been announced that her new movie project In Darkness is being packaged for sale at the American Film Market, by XYZ Films. With Dormer attached to the lead role, the film boasts the return to the big screen of writer-director Anthony Byrne (Short Order), who has been focusing on directing television drama in recent years.
With apparent, distant echoes of Terence Young’s 1967 film Wait Until Dark, In Darkness features a blind musician who finds herself dragged into the darker corners of London when she hears a brutal murder being committed in a neighbouring property. Though it initially appears that she is very much out of her depth, we soon discover that her pursuit of revenge has a greater longevity than anyone could have anticipated. While Dormer will play the musician, the wider cast includes Ed Skrein (The Transporter Refuelled) and Stacy Martin (Nymphomanic Vols I and 2).
After her break-out role as Anne Boleyn in The Tudors, Natalie Dormer has steadily been building her resume, accumulating increasingly visible roles in increasingly large productions. Small parts in films such as Captain America: The First Avenger and Rush brought her to the roles of Cressida in The Hunger Games franchise, and Margaery Tyrell in Game Of Thrones – and onward to her first lead movie role in the horror film The Forest, due in for release in 2016.
Such momentum means that now is the time for Dormer to launch into creating her own roles – ensuring that she continues to take the lead into 2017 and beyond. From the plot details already released, it seems that Dormer, and her co-writer, Byrne have specifically created a lead female character that is – hopefully – complex and layered, allowing for Dormer to flex some dramatic muscle on the big screen.
In Darkness is scheduled to begin shooting in early 2016.