09/09/2025 - The two-time Oscar winner will star in and produce the drama, which marks the first directorial outing from the acclaimed Lady Macbeth screenwriter

Actress Cate Blanchett (© 2025 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it)

Australian actress Cate Blanchett is attached to star in Sweetsick, the feature-length directorial debut by British writer Alice Birch. The film is being produced by Disney-owned Searchlight Pictures, with Blanchett also serving as a producer through her company, Dirty Films.

The story centres on a mercurial woman, played by Blanchett, who possesses a strange and piercing gift – the ability to perceive what others most intimately need, often at great personal cost to her – who sets out on a journey home.

The screenplay is written by Birch, who first rose to prominence with the critically acclaimed Lady Macbeth [+see also:
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film profile], starring Florence Pugh, which earned her a BAFTA nomination. Since then, she has become one of the UK’s most in-demand screenwriters. She won a WGA award for her work on HBO series Succession and received an Emmy nomination for her miniseries adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People. She later adapted another Rooney novel, Conversations with Friends, before serving as writer and showrunner on the Rachel Weisz-led reimagining of Dead Ringers, based on David Cronenberg’s classic. Her film credits include The Wonder [+see also:
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film profile]. More recently, she co-wrote Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love.

On embarking on her first film as a director, Birch commented: “I could not be more excited to be making my debut feature as a director with such an extraordinary team of filmmakers and collaborators. I am in the safest hands with Tessa Ross and her brilliant team at House, and am so proud to be working with Searchlight and Film4. To have the peerless Cate Blanchett at the centre of it is thrilling.”

Blanchett, one of the most highly acclaimed performers of her generation, has won two Academy Awards – Best Actress for Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine and Best Supporting Actress for Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator. Her extensive credits include Elizabeth, Carol [+see also:
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Production is due to begin this autumn in the UK and Greece, with additional casting to be announced shortly. British producer Tessa Ross, of House Productions (Conclave [+see also:
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Sweet­sick is being produced by Ross, Juliette Howell and Theo Barrowclough, of London-based House Productions, alongside Blanchett and her Dirty Films outfit, as well as Lee Groombridge, with Film4 acting as an executive producer and co-financier. At Searchlight Pictures, VP of Development & Production Pete Spencer and creative executive Cameron Chidsey are overseeing the project, reporting to Katie Goodson-Thomas and DanTram Nguyen. For Film4, director Farhana Bhula and development and production executive Alice Whittemore are supervising, with Bhula also credited as executive producer. Zoe Edwards, Harry Dixon and James Green serve as executive producers for House Productions.