Sometimes when an actress works as often as Ex Machina's Alicia Vikander is lately, they quickly get overexposed. Just ask Olivia Wilde. Remember when she was EVERYWHERE? Well, that probably isn't going to happen with Vikander, who has starred in three movies already this year and has at least five more coming up. Now you can add one more to her busy schedule as she's joining Tom Hanks in James Ponsoldt's cyber-thriller, The Circle.
Ponsoldt (Smashed, The Spectacular Now) will write and direct the film based on Dave Eggers' novel about a young woman who is hired by The Circle, a powerful and mysterious tech firm. Hanks will play the company's charismatic co-founder.
When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world — even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.
The film is being shopped at Cannes, and given the range of talent already involved it should have no problem lining up buyers. Vikander will be seen this summer in The Man from UNCLE. She also has The Danish Girl, Tulip Fever, Adam Jones, and The Light Between Oceans on the way. [THR]
