Great news, new project for Jennifer!
In her first screen-starring role since announcing a year-long sabbatical, Jennifer Lawrence will star in an untitled film that will mark the feature directorial debut of acclaimed theater helmer Lila Neugebauer. Plot is under wraps, and the film is backed by IAC Films and A24. Script was written by first-time screenwriter Elizabeth Sanders.
Scott Rudin and Eli Bush are producing with Lawrence and Justine Polsky. A mid-June production start is set in New Orleans.
Lawrence has the X-Men: First Class sequel Dark Phoenix coming June 7 through Fox, and she took a break after making the films Red Sparrow and Mother! She won the Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook and got three other noms for Joy, American Hustle and Winter’s Bone, the latter a breakout turn that led to The Hunger Games and global stardom.
One of the standout young stage directors, Neugebauer made her Broadway debut last year with the acclaimed revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s The Waverly Gallery, starring Elaine May and Lucas Hedges and produced by Rudin and Bush. Her other plays include Tracy Letts’ Mary Page Marlowe, Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo: Homelife/The Zoo Story, and the world premieres of Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves, The Mad Ones’ Mrs. Murray’s Menagerie and Miles For Mary, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Everybody, and Annie Baker’s The Antipodes. She also directed an episode of the Duplass Brothers’ HBO series Room 104.
The film becomes another in the alliance between Rudin/Bush, IAC and A24 that encompasses Lady Bird, Eighth Grade, Mid90s and Ex Machina, and has upcoming the Safdie Brothers-directed Uncut Gems, Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow, and Joel Coen’s Macbeth with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand. Rudin/Bush, IAC Films, and A24 also recently announced a joint venture for non-fiction films and series.
Polsky and Lawrence will produce through their newly formed production company Excellent Cadaver.
Lawrence is repped by LBI Entertainment and Hansen Jacobson; Neugebauer is with UTA.
