A few days after we reported that Alice In Wonderland star Mia Wasikowska was circling John Hillcoat‘s The Wettest County and the fantasy thriller Stoker, Deadline reports that Wasikowska is “negotiating” to star in the latter for Oldboy director Chan-wook Park. I had previously predicted that Wasikowska (well, her agents, publicists and managers, anyway) would go with the “safer” (more studio friendly) Prohibition-era project Wettest County. I may have been mistaken. Shows what I know, right?
Stoker was written by Prison Break star Wentworth Miller (under the pseudonym Ted Foulke) , and Deadline has a nice, “evocative” description of the project:
She’ll play an eccentric teen whose enigmatic and estranged uncle returns to the family after the death of the girl’s father. Strange things begin to happen.
I’ll just bet they do. This is Chan-wook Park, after all, whose brilliant Oldboy is only surpassed by his own Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. (Chan-wook’s Lady Vengeance rounds out his “revenge” trilogy – and all three are currently available on Netflix’s Play Instantly)
Fox Searchlight is reportedly backing the project, and hopefully might do the same for Uncle Charlie, a Stoker prequel also penned by Miller/Foulke. It appears that Wasikowska is taking a challenging career path. She just wrapped her turn as the title role in the oft-filmed Jane Eyre for director Cary Fukunaga and followed the billion-dollar-grossing Alice with a nice performance in The Kids Are All Right. Wasikowska seems intent on mixing big-budget heat with indie cred – much like Johnny Depp when he was still interesting.
Will Stoker be as weird as it sounds? Are you a fan of Mia Wasikowska?