Elizabeth Banks, Sigourney Weaver, and Kate Mara are set to “Call Jane.” Deadline reports that they have boarded the long-in-the-works drama about the Jane Collective, a real 1960s underground abortion network. Oscar-nominated “Carol” screenwriter Phyllis Nagy has also joined the project as director.
From a Blacklist script by Hayley Schore and Roshan Sethi, “Call Jane” stars Banks as “Joy, a traditional 1960s housewife who unexpectedly falls pregnant,” per the source. “She then finds the Janes, an underground abortion movement led by Virginia (Weaver). The group saves her life and gives her a sense of purpose: to help other women take control of their destinies.”
Schore and Sethi will also executive produce, and Robbie Brenner (“The Dallas Buyers Club”) is producing. Production is expected to kick off next spring.
“’Call Jane’ was made for these times – and I have never felt more passionately that our culture is ready to embrace its call for decency, for community, for good will, and humor in all things – and above all, its call for necessary change,” Nagy said.
“As a woman and a mother of two girls, I feel like the time is now and the moment essential to bring a film like ‘Call Jane’ into the world,” Brenner explained. “With such cultural uncertainty and when so many of our rights as women are under siege, I know that telling this important story couldn’t be more timely or necessary, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to collaborate with such an extraordinary group of creative and strong women at the helm.”
Elisabeth Moss and Susan Sarandon were previously attached to star in the film, and Sian Heder was signed on to direct.
The Jane Collective is also the subject of last year’s “Ask for Jane,” directed by Rachel Carey, and “This Is Jane,” from director Kimberly Peirce and scribe Stephany Folsom. The latter is in development. A number of other recent projects have explored abortion and reproductive justice — topics that just become more timely and urgent by the day — including Eliza Hittman’s “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s “Unpregnant,” and “AKA Jane Roe,” a doc about Roe v. Wade plaintiff and pro-choice turned anti-choice activist Norma McCorvey.
Nagy previously penned TV movie “Mrs. Harris.” She will write and direct Dusty Springfield biopic “So Much Love” and “The Vanished,” based on journalist Lena Mauger and photographer Stephan Remeal’s investigation into the annual disappearance of nearly 100,000 citizens throughout Japan.
Banks was last seen in “Mrs. America,” while “The Defenders” and “The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance” are among Weaver’s more recent credits. You can catch Mara next in “A Teacher,” Hannah Fidell’s series about a high school teacher’s predatory relationship with her student. Based on Fidell’s 2013 feature of the same name, the show premieres November 10 on FX on Hulu.
