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PRODUCTION UK

Ben Wheatley to direct new version of Rebecca

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- Lily James and Armie Hammer star in screenplay written by Jane Goldman for Working Title and Netflix

Ben Wheatley to direct new version of Rebecca
Actress Lily James, actor Armie Hammer and director Ben Wheatley

British auteur Ben Wheatley has signed on to direct a new adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s gothic novel Rebecca [+see also:
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]
for Working Title and Netflix. This would be the director’s eight feature film, after Down Terrace [+see also:
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(2009), Kill List [+see also:
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interview: Ben Wheatley
film profile
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(2011), Sightseers [+see also:
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interview: Ben Wheatley
film profile
]
(world-premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight in 2012), A Field in England [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ben Wheatley
film profile
]
(Special Jury Prize in the competition at Karlovy Vary in 2013), High-Rise [+see also:
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(in competition at San Sebastián in 2015), Free Fire [+see also:
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(People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award at Toronto in 2016) and Happy New Year, Colin Burstead [+see also:
film review
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]
(world-premiered at the recent London Film Festival).

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The novel tells the story of a young woman who marries a widower, only to discover that the housekeeper at Manderlay, Mrs Danvers, is determined to make sure that the young spouse will be forever in the shadow of Mr de Winter’s first wife, Rebecca. Alfred Hitchcock most famously adapted the novel in 1940, in a version that went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture.

Actress Lily James, who starred in this year’s Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again [+see also:
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and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society [+see also:
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]
, will play the wife. Armie Hammer, who has already appeared in Wheatley’s Free Fire, has also signed on to star as Mr de Winter. This new adaptation is penned by Jane Goldman, writer of James Watkins’ The Woman in Black [+see also:
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, Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service [+see also:
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and Kingsman: The Golden Circle [+see also:
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, and Tim Burton’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, among others.

Working Title’s Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan are producing alongside Nira Park. The film is expected to go into production in the spring of 2019.

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