Fresh from her Oscar win, Cate Blanchett is lining up some new movies, with the latest one she’s in talks for sounding like it could be pretty interesting. Screen International reports that she’s up for The Dig, from Danish director Susanne Bier.
The film, ‘explores the story and characters behind the 1938/9 excavation of Sutton Hoo, whose sixth and seventh century riches included a 27-metre ship and which is the likely burial site of King Raedwald of East Anglia.’
It’s one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in British history, with many of the treasures found still amongst the most famous object in the British Museum. However the dig took place in the shadow of the run-up to World War 2. Blanchett will play amateur archaeologist Edith Pretty, one of the driving forces behind the find, who used it to occupy her time after the death of her husband.
She drafted in famed excavator Basil Brown to help uncover the Sutton Hoo ship burial. It was Pretty who actually owned all the treasures after they were dug up, but she gifted them to the nation, which at the time the biggest gift to the British Museum by a living donor.
Tamara Drewe and Byzantium writer Moira Buffini
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