British novelist, screenwriter, and helmer Rebecca Frayn is set to make her feature directorial debut. She’s bringing an adaptation of “Spies,” her father’s award-winning novel of the same name, to the big screen. Deadline broke the news.
Released in 2002, Michael Frayn’s book “follows a man as he relives his childhood experiences of the Second World War, retracing his steps as he tries to uncover the secrets of his best friend’s mother who they believe to be a German spy,” the source summarizes.
Belinda Allen is producing the feature via her Middlemarch Films banner, as is Left Bank Pictures.
“I have always hoped to direct a feature. Until very recently only seven percent of directors were women, it has been very hard to get into the room,” Frayn told Deadline. “It’s thrilling and extraordinary how much that is changing post-#MeToo. A lot of my male director friends feel marginalized in a way that is quite shocking. I think it’s systematic change, rather than a vogue-ish thing that will be overturned.”
Frayn cited execs’ lack of appetite for female-led films as the reason for the film’s “long gestation.” Distributors would “pay lip service to gender issues,” but she could sense “there was a dead look behind their eyes and it wouldn’t fly.”
The multi-hyphenate explained, “It’s been a ten year labor of love to find people who would back us. After #MeToo, the sense that the film was marginal was completely overturned, it suddenly got momentum and became a zeitgeist project.”
Frayn penned the screenplay for “Misbehaviour,” a comedy based on the true events of the 1970 Miss World pageant, with Gaby Chiappe. Set to hit theaters in the UK March 13, the pic revisits how feminist protesters disrupted the most-watched television show in the world. Keira Knightley, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Jessie Buckley star. No word on a U.S. release date yet.
The author of “Deceptions,” “One Life,” and “Heatwave,” Frayn’s other writing credits include 2011 feature “The Lady.” ITV drama “Whose Baby?” is among her directing credits.
