Xavier Dolan has been making waves in the art movie world for the last few years, with many expecting him to becoming a major force in filmmaking ever since he won a prize at Cannes for his directorial debut, I Killed My Mother, which he helmed when he was only 18-years-old.
He’s made four more acclaimed films since then (Heartbeats, Laurence Anyways, Tom At The Farm and Mommy), all if which have concerned the LGBT experience in one way or another, but he’s stuck to his French-Canadian roots by avoiding the English language. That’s going to change though, as Bent reports he readying his first English-language effort and Jessica Chastain is circling to star.
She seems to be a bit of a fan of the filmmaker, as back in May after watching Dolan’s latest movie, Mommy, she tweeted, ‘Completely blown away by @XDolan. His film, MOMMY was so impressive’.
The new movie is called The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, which Dolan has described as “the story of an American movie star with everything working out for him who has a secretive correspondence with an 11 year old in London.”
Dolan tells Bent, “It was this friend of mine – a journalist – who had brought to my attention that Jessica Chastain had seen ‘Mommy’ in Cannes and had liked it and tweeted about it. I went back and scrolled down the tweets and there was this lovely tweet where Jessica was saying that she had liked ‘Mommy.'”
‘It dawned on me that I should ask Jessica about playing the ‘villain’ role in ‘John F. Donovan. There is this character of the editor-in-chief of a gossip magazine. The movie really is a satire of the business — more dramatic than humorous. And there’s this antagonistic figure that wants to ruin the lives of every star, especially that of the lead character. And I reached out to Jessica and she read the script. She loved it, and we got along like hotcakes. That’s basically it. I can already foresee all the pleasure we’ll have working together.”
Assuming it all works out with scheduling, Chastain will be on the set when shooting kicks off in Montreal, New York, Miami, England and Eastern Europe next year.
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