Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix to Play 1930s Couple in Movie About 'Jealousy, Betrayal and Murder'

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Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix are taking their romance to the big screen.

On Monday, FilmNation announced that Mara, 37, and Phoenix, 47, who made their red carpet debut as a couple at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, will star in lead roles in director Pawel Pawlikowski's next movie. The movie currently uses the working title The Island, according to The Hollywood Reporter and Variety.

The film is described as a thriller inspired by real events and follows a couple in the 1930s who aim to live on a remote island until they grow into "a tabloid newspaper sensation," which leads to the arrival of a "a self-styled countess" who plots to build a hotel on the island, according to the outlets.

"Psychological warfare ensues between the countess and the American couple as sexual infidelity, betrayal and eventually murder takes place among the island interlopers," reads a synopsis for the film, per THR.

"Pawel Pawlikowski is one of the world's greatest filmmakers working today," FilmNation CEO Glen Basner told THR. "Pawel bringing this story of jealousy, betrayal and murder in a Garden of Eden is exactly what we all need to drive audiences back to the cinema."

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VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix

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Phoenix and Mara first met in 2012 on the set of Her, in which Mara played Phoenix's ex-wife. Phoenix told Vanity Fair in 2019 that he thought Mara didn't like him at all, but it turned out she was just shy.

"She's the only girl I ever looked up on the internet," he said at the time. "We were just friends, e-mail friends. I'd never done that. Never looked up a girl online."

The couple also costarred in 2016's Mary Magdalene, in which Mara played the titular role, and Phoenix portrayed Jesus. Mara and Phoenix got engaged privately in 2019, and rumors of an engagement sparked when Mara was photographed wearing a large diamond ring on her left hand.

In September 2020, Mara and Phoenix welcomed their first child, a son named River, named after Phoenix's late brother who died in 1993.