The last time Domhnall Gleeson and director Lenny Abrahamson teamed up it was for the offbeat and completely amazing musical comedy, Frank. Both have taken their careers to new levels since, with Gleeson showing up as a villain in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, plus a major role in potential Oscar contender, Brooklyn. Meanwhile, Abrahamson has been earning strong reviews on the festival circuit for Room. Now the duo are coming back together again for a project that has a ton of potential.
According to Baz Bamigboye, Abrahamson will direct an adaptation of Sarah Waters' best-selling novel, The Little Stranger, with Gleeson starring. Lucinda Coxon (The Danish Girl) will pen the ghost story's screenplay. Here's a synopsis from the book:
One postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country physician, is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once impressive and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. Its owners—mother, son, and daughter—are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with conflicts of their own. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become intimately entwined with his.
Not sure this would be something to get excited about without Abrahamson and Gleeson, but with them this could be great. Production begins next summer.
