After taking home the Jury Prize at Cannes for his gripping family drama The Celebration, Dogme 95 founder Thomas Vinterberg struggled to live up the expectations that came with it. That all changed earlier this year with the child abuse scandal drama The Hunt, which the Danish will put up as their Academy Award entry for Best Foreign Language Film. Vinterberg isn't sitting around to wait to see how that develops, and last month he began production on his adaptation of Thomas Hardy's classic novel, Far from the Madding Crowd, and now the first images for it have been released.
Starring Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Juno Temple and Tom Sturridge, the film centers on Bathsheba Everdeen, a woman who is courted by three very different men: the gentle shepherd Gabriel Oak; the rich farmer William Boldwood; and the dashing soldier Frank Troy. Schoenaerts was great opposite Marion Cotillard in last year's Rust and Bone, and as Gabriel Oak his physical presence should match up well with Mulligan's gentle beauty.
No release date yet but expect to see Far from the Madding Crowd hit the festival circuit in 2014. [Empire]
