Sophie Hyde will tackle another unconventional relationship in her next pic. The Australian writer-director will follow up Emma Thompson-starrer “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” a comedy about a retired school teacher who hires a sex worker with the hopes of experiencing her first orgasm, with “An Ideal Wife,” the story of Constance Lloyd, an Irish author and feminist activist who was married to Oscar Wilde. “Game of Thrones” alumna Emilia Clarke will star in the title, which will be shopped at this week’s American Film Market. Variety broke the news.
“An Ideal Wife” will “shed light on Lloyd,” who “took part in the dress reform movement, which campaigned to allow women to dress in comfortable clothing rather than the stifling Victorian dresses of the era,” per the source. “Lloyd married Wilde in 1884 and the couple had two sons. However, after Wilde received a two-year prison term for homosexuality, which was still illegal at the time (it would only be decriminalized in England and Wales in 1967), Lloyd moved to Switzerland with their children, and distanced them from the writer.”
Plot details are being kept under wraps. The film’s title is a nod to one of Wilde’s most famous plays, “An Ideal Husband.”
A four-time Emmy nominee for her portrayal of Daenerys Targaryen on “Game of Thrones,” Clarke’s film credits include “Me Before You,” “Last Christmas,” and “Solo: A Star Wars Story.”
Hyde made her feature debut with “52 Tuesdays,” a coming-of-age drama that netted her directing honors for World Cinema – Dramatic at the 2014 edition of Sundance Film Festival. Her sophomore offering, “Animals,” the story of long-time best friends at a crossroads, won best debut screenplay at the British Independent Film Awards.
“Someone once told me not to have children if I wanted to be a director. That would have made my life smaller, personally speaking,” Hyde told us. “There is no one answer to how we build our lives and so there shouldn’t be a kind of life you have to give up to tell stories, in fact, we should be seeking stories from people with a broad range of experience. That way we get the most interesting and varied stories, right?”
