After making history as Saudi Arabia’s first woman director, Wadjda helmer Haifaa Al-Mansour is in final negotiations for her follow-up film: a romance between writers Percy Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Mary Shelley).
A Storm in the Stars will focus on the 18-year-old Mary Shelley’s tumultuous relationship with the married poet and her work of writing the novel Frankenstein. (Shelley was 21 years old when her masterpiece was published.) Fingers crossed that Mary Wollstonecraft — prominent 18th-century feminist, author of The Vindication of the Rights of Women, and Mary Shelley’s mother — makes an appearance.
Producer Amy Baer said of the project, “From the minute I read the script [by Emma Jensen], I was hoping to find a female director who would realize what Emma was trying to say — that Mary Shelley’s story is as much about female empowerment and about a woman ahead of her time, and not just a ‘monster’ origin story.”
Rebecca Miller and Joannie Burstein will executive produce.
[h/t Deadline]
