Writer-director Niki Caro has added yet another project to her packed slate. She’s inked a deal to develop and direct “Exposure,” a film centered on Rosalind Franklin, a trailblazing scientist whose work played an integral role in making sense of DNA, The Hollywood Reporter writes. Caro is working with eOne on the project.
Written by Hayley Schore and Roshan Sethi, the film “focuses on Franklin, the unsung crystallography expert who was instrumental in the discovery of the DNA’s double-helix structure in 1953 by Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins. Her initial photos eventually helped Watson map the structure of DNA,” THR describes. Schore and Sethi were both staff writers on “Code Black,” a CBS medical drama.
According to PBS, Franklin, who was born in 1920, decided to pursue a career as a scientist when she was just 15 years old. She passed an admissions examination for Cambridge University in 1938, but not all of her family supported her education and career goals. Franklin’s father “disapproved of university education for women” and refused to pay for her schooling. An aunt intervened, insisting that Franklin should have the opportunity to go to school, and offered to cover her fees. “Franklin’s mother also took her side until her father finally gave in,” writes PBS.
Caro has a number of projects in the works. The New Zealand-born filmmaker will direct the premiere episode of “Anne,” Netflix’s upcoming eight-episode series based on Canadian author L.M. Montgomery’s much-loved “Anne of Green Gables” books. “Callas,” a biopic about opera legend Maria Callas she wrote and directed, is in pre-production. And she helmed “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” scheduled to hit theaters in March, 2017. The film, starring Jessica Chastain, centers on the Holocaust heroics of Polish couple Jan and Antonina Żabiński, who helped 300 Jews flee the Warsaw Ghetto by hiding them in animal cages.
Chastain wrote a guest feature for The Hollywood Reporter about filming “The Zookeeper’s Wife” and emphasized that she’d “never been on a set with so many women… way more than [she’s] ever worked with on a film before.” The female-centric project is not only helmed by a woman, but produced and written by women. “Usually on a movie it would be me and maybe two or three other women, even though there are 100 people there,” the Oscar nominee contextualized.
Back in August Caro was reported to be on a shortlist of three directors being considered for the job of directing “Captain Marvel.” Still no word on who will helm the Brie Larson-led Marvel blockbuster.
Caro’s credits include “McFarland, USA,” “North Country,” and “Whale Rider.”
