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Keira Knightley has been attached to a remake of My Fair Lady for some time now, but it looks like the wheels are finally in motion for the redo of the Audrey Hepburn classic. After Knightley auditioned for the part some three years ago, the Telegraph is now reporting that she has won the role after Scarlett Johansson also became a strong contender to play Eliza Doolittle.
And not only has the lead finally been locked down, but the project has a director now as well — Joe Wright. Knightley’s director in Pride & Prejudice and Atonement, Wright looks to bounce back from his last outing, the somewhat forgettable The Soloist. If you’ll recall, Wright was most recently attached to direct Cate Blanchett in Indian Summer, about the last days of British colonial rule in India centered around the romantic relationship that developed between Lady Edwina Mountbatten and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Financing problems and creative issues have shelved the project indefinitely, though Wright and Blanchett will remain attached.
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The coming-of-age story has been done so many times that it is difficult to imagine that anyone has anything refreshing left to add to the genre, if it can be called that. Yet somehow director Lone Scherfig and writer Nick Hornby’s An Education manages to present itself as wholly original, a charming, nostalgic, heartbreaking, and altogether invigorating tale set during a 1961 England that was on the cusp of social and artistic revolution.
Taking place in a post-war, pre-Beatles London suburb, An Education follows 16-year old Jenny, a brilliant and culture-minded student with aims to “read English” at the prestigious Oxford University. Her quiet existence takes an unexpected turn when the charismatic David appears in her life, a suitor twice her age who is debonair, witty, and culturally refined in all the ways that Jenny postures to be. He charms his way into her life and home, even winning the approval of Jenny’s timid and buttoned-up parents, and whisks her off to the alluring and seductive world of smoky jazz clubs and romantic Parisian getaways. Jenny suddenly finds herself faced with either continuing her education, a self-empowering but toiling exercise in which she has recently lost sight of its meaning, or giving herself over to the “university of life” and tackling the world’s adventures head on. Read»
The trailer for the Sundance darling has arrived online. Read»
Check out Universal’s 2009 preview, which includes Public Enemies, Fast & Furious, and The Wolf Man.
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