Golden Globe nominee Christopher Abbott (Catch-22) will be joining the star-studded cast of Yorgos Lanthimos’ upcoming film Poor Things, according to a recent report from Deadline.
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Abbott joins a cast that is already packed and features the likes of Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Mark Ruffalo, and Ramy Youssef. Lanthimos will direct the project, with Element Pictures producing the film along with Emma Stone, whose Fruit Tree production house will also have credits.
First published in 1992, Poor Things is a Victorian-set novel that will feature Emma Stone as Bella Baxter – a beautiful young erotomaniac brought back to life with the brain of an infant. It was also inspired by Mary Shelly’s classic gothic novel Frankenstein.
“Ostensibly the memoirs of late-19th-century Glasgow physician Archibald McCandless, the narrative follows the bizarre life of oversexed, volatile Bella Baxter, an emancipated woman, and a female Frankenstein,” reads the official synopsis for the upcoming film. “Bella is not her real name; as Victorian Blessington, she drowned herself to escape her abusive husband, but a surgeon removed the brain from the fetus she was carrying and placed it in her skull, resuscitating her. The revived Bella has the mental age of a child. Engaged to marry McCandless, she chloroforms him and runs off with a shady lawyer who takes her on a whirlwind adventure, hopping from Alexandria to Odessa to a Parisian brothel. As her brain matures, Bella develops a social conscience, but her rescheduled nuptials to Archie are cut short when she is recognized as Victoria by her lawful husband, Gen. Sir Aubrey Blessington.”
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The script for the film is being adapted by Lanthimos and Tony McNamara, with whom he also previously worked on Lanthimos’ Oscar-nominated period drama The Favourite and shared a Best Original Screenplay nomination with Deborah Davis. Production is scheduled to begin this year in the fall.
