Emma Mackey, Joe Alwyn to Star in Emily Brontë Origin Story
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Emma Mackey, Joe Alwyn, Fionn Whitehead and Emily Beecham have boarded Emily Brontë’s origin story “Emily,” helmed and scripted by Frances O’Connor. Embankment has launched worldwide sales on the film.
In her script, O’Connor has imagined the transformative journey to womanhood of Brontë – a rebel and a misfit, and author of “Wuthering Heights.”
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O’Connor, known for her extensive acting career including “Mansfield Park,” “Bedazzled,” “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” and “The Missing,” makes her directorial debut.
O’Connor said: “Emily Brontë’s work and words are full of passion, feeling, violence, and fierce intelligence. In creating an imagined life for Emily, she will live again for our audience. Her story is about a young woman daring to form herself, to embrace her true nature, despite the consequences. Emily is, in fact, a love letter to women today, especially young women, a calling to them to challenge themselves to connect with their authentic voice and potential.”
Emma Mackey, lead in Netflix hit “Sex Education,” heads the cast as Emily. Joe Alwyn (“The Favourite,” “Boy Erased,” “Mary Queen of Scots” and “Harriet”), star of Netflix’s forthcoming Jojo Moyes’ adaptation “Last Letter from Your Lover,” stars as Emily’s conflicted lover.
Fionn Whitehead, who played the lead in “Dunkirk” and the Emmy-Award winning “Bandersnatch,” plays Branwell Brontë, Emily’s inspiring but self-destructive brother. Whitehead will be seen later this year in Roger Michell’s “The Duke,” opposite Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent, and Neil Berger’s “Voyagers.”
Emily Beecham, winner of Cannes Film Festival 2019’s best actress prize for “Little Joe,” and appearing in Disney’s upcoming “Cruella,” plays Charlotte Brontë.
Principal photography will start in the first quarter of next year in Yorkshire, U.K.
“Emily” is produced by David Barron (“Harry Potter” films 4-8, “Cinderella,” “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit”), Piers Tempest and Jo Bamford’s Tempo Productions (“Military Wives,” “Ordinary Love,” “The Wife”) with Robert Connolly and Robert Patterson of Arenamedia (“Paper Planes,” “Balibo,” “The Dry”).
Barron said: “We are going to produce a movie of significant ambition – for audiences to enjoy and celebrate the scale of Emily Bronte’s own magnificent imagination.”
Embankment’s Tim Haslam said: “We really admire Frances’ expertise for combining highly refreshing and emotional storytelling with detailed research and nuanced observation and we celebrate her as a new voice of cinema.”
Embankment is placing worldwide sales and distribution for a 2022 release.
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