Looks like Scarlett Johansson will be switching out the Black Widow’s restrictive wardrobe for turn-of-the-century high society fashions. The Avengers actress has signed on to star in Sony Pictures limited series TV adaptation, The Custom Of The Country.
Johansson will produce and star in the eight-episode run, which is currently being eyed for potential release on a premium cable network. The show will be scripted by Christopher Hampton, based on the original novel by Pulitzer Prize-winner Edith Wharton. Interestingly enough, Hampton adapted the novel twenty years ago as a vehicle for Michelle Pfeiffer after she appeared in The Age Of Innocence – another Wharton adaptation.
The show will be be set in the early 1900s and will mark Johansson’s first role on a TV series as she takes on the role of Undine Spragg. A Midwestern gal with her sights set on rising to success in New York City, she’ll do whatever it takes to make it. She’ll apparently be rather ruthless in her quest, so expect a lot of duplicitous behaviour from Johansson. Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing how she’ll tackle the challenge of Spragg’s ascent. Especially as we’re a millennia away from getting that Black Widow movie.
Tell us, are you happy to see Scarlett Johansson take on The Custom Of The Country and leave the Marvel Cinematic Universe behind for a while? Sound off below, and check out the plot summary while you’re at it.
First published in 1913, Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country is a scathing novel of ambition featuring one of the most ruthless heroines in literature. Undine Spragg is as unscrupulous as she is magnetically beautiful. Her rise to the top of New York’s high society from the nouveau riche provides a provocative commentary on the upwardly mobile and the aspirations that eventually cause their ruin. One of Wharton’s most acclaimed works, The Custom of the Country is a stunning indictment of materialism and misplaced values that is as powerful today for its astute observations about greed and power as when it was written nearly a century ago.
