Reese Witherspoon, Naomi Watts, and producer Bruna Papandrea are teaming up on a new feature film. Screen Australia confirms that the three will produce “Penguin Bloom,” a family film in which Watts will also star. “Penguin Bloom” is part of the most recent slate of projects to receive Story Development funding from Screen Australia.
Based on a true story, “Penguin Bloom” is about “a family’s extraordinary friendship with a unique little bird.” Emma Cooper (“Following the Rabbit-Proof Fence”) will join Witherspoon, Watts, and Papandrea as a producer. “Jasper Jones” writer Shaun Grant will pen the script from Bradley Trevor Greive’s book. No word on a director yet.
Witherspoon and Papandrea are also set to produce “The Dry,” another project receiving Story Development funding. Based on Jane Harper’s novel of the same name, “the atmospheric thriller centers on Aaron Falk who returns to his Victorian hometown for his best mate’s funeral and is drawn into a web of lies and murder, forcing him to confront the guilty secrets of his own past.” Harry Cripps will write the script and Robert Connolly will direct.
“It is impossible to overstate the value of having someone with the clout and experience of producer Bruna Papandrea return home to develop distinctly Australian stories with home-grown talent,” observed Nerida Moore, Senior Manager of Development at Screen Australia.
Papandrea previously worked with Witherspoon at Pacific Standard, the production company behind “Big Little Lies,” “Gone Girl,” and “Wild.” Her new banner, Made Up Stories, is producing and co-financing “The Babadook” helmer Jennifer Kent’s “The Nightingale,” a crime drama about a woman seeking revenge for her family’s murder in Tasmania. The project is expected to hit theaters in early 2019. Papandrea is also behind the TNT pilot “Deadlier Than the Male,” which follows a trio of characters with troubled and mysterious pasts and stars Amy Brenneman.
Witherspoon is up for the Lead Actress in a Limited Series or a Movie Emmy for her turn as Madeline Martha Mackenzie in “Big Little Lies.” You can catch her next in the romantic comedy “Home Again,” out this Friday, September 8. Hallie Meyers-Shyer’s directorial debut is about a newly-single mother who rents her guest house out to three younger men and embarks on a romance with one of her new tenants.
Watts stars as a free-spirited, nomadic artist and mother in “The Glass Castle,” in theaters now. The drama is based on Jeannette Walls’ memoir about her unconventional upbringing. Watts also appears on Showtime’s “Twin Peaks” revival, which aired its final episode this past Sunday.
Among the other projects receiving Story Development funding from Screen Australia are the psychological thriller “Runaway” and the web series “All Our Eggs.” From writer-director Mirrah Foulkes, “Runaway” is adapted from an Alice Munro short story about a young woman trying to save her marriage through boundary-pushing sexual fantasy. Jane Campion and Jan Chapman are attached as exec producers and Alex White is producing. “All Our Eggs” follows a couple in their 30s (Adrienne Pickering and Matt Zeremes) as they try to conceive. The series is written by Vanessa Bates and Martha Goddard, with Goddard also serving as director.
