Toni Collette, Gillian Anderson Join Fred Schepisi’s ‘Andorra’
Toni Collette, Gillian Anderson, Joanna Lumley and Riccardo Scamarcio (“Burnt,” “To Rome With Love”) will join Clive Owen in the cast of “Andorra,” the upcoming film by veteran Australian director Fred Schepisi.
Paris-based Celluloid Dreams will handle international rights sales for the picture which is based on the novel of the same name by Peter Cameron, with a screenplay adapted by Cameron and producer Jamie Bialkower.
The story follows an American who settles in the tiny country of Andorra, meets an Australian couple and unsettles the other natives when he becomes linked to a dead body floating in the harbor.
Production is scheduled to commence in Italy next April with David Nichols from Cineroma as the Italian production partner. Production design is by Academy Award-winner Patrizia von Brandenstein, with cinematography by Ian Baker. Post production will follow in Australia.
Producers are Bialkower for Jump Street Films and Lizzette Atkins for Unicorn Films. Academy Award nominee and BAFTA winner James Ivory (“The Remains of the Day”, “Howards End”) is the executive producer.
The film is to be produced on a budget of some A$16 million (US$12 million) and is confirmed as being able to access Australia’s producer’s offset rebate system administered by Screen Australia. While Sharmill Films was previously announced as the Australian distributor, Celluloid Dreams now controls world rights including Australia and Italy.
Cameron’s 2002 novel “The City of Your Final Destination” was adapted into a film directed in 2009 by Ivory for Merchant Ivory Productions and Hyde Park Entertainment
“Clive Owen plays Alexander Fox, a bookseller who leaves the U.S. after a personal tragedy to begin a new life abroad. The tiny country he chooses – Andorra – is an idyllic escape, offering Alexander the chance to reinvent himself. He quickly becomes entangled with Mrs. Dent (Collette), an Australian who shares a first name, a large dog and a volatile secret with her husband, and Mrs. Quay (Lumley), the kayaking matriarch of an Andorran dynasty who seems to recall him from long ago. As Alexander finds comfort in the company of her daughter, Miss Quay (Anderson), the mystery of Fox origin deepens. A woman’s body is found soon after his arrival in Andorra and the local lieutenant, Afgroni (Scamarcio) becomes strangely convinced that he is responsible. With his past threatening to envelop his newfound paradise, Fox finds himself in a crisis of conscience and identity, in a foreign country he may never be able to escape from,” reads Jump Street’s synopsis.
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