Anne Hathaway is currently in negotiations to star in Mudbound director, Dee Rees’ political thriller, The Last Thing He Wanted.
Based on the Joan Didion novel of the same name from 1996, the film will focus on hardscrabble journalist Elena McMahon who finds herself on dangerous ground as the Iran Contra Affair’s arms for drugs plot reaches its tipping point.
Marco Villalobos has written the screenplay, and in a released statement the film is being labelled as “a thrilling story of one woman, alone and unrelenting in a race against time,” Dallas Buyers Clubs’ Cassian Elwes optioned the book from Didion to develop it with Rees following their collaboration on Mudbound.
In the book, Elena McMahon, a reporter for the Washington Post who quits her job covering the 1984 Presidential primaries to care for her father after her mother’s death. In an unusual turn of events, she inherits his position as an arms dealer for the U.S. Government in Central America. In this sparsely written, quick paced narrative, Elena struggles to cope with the spies, American military personnel, and the consequences of her father’s errors that are waiting for her on a small island off the coast of Costa Rica.
Elevated’s Cassian Elwes will produce and The Fyzz Facility’s Wayne Marc Godfrey and Robert Jones will produce and finance. The project is currently in pre-production.
Anne Hathaway, who is all set to star in this year’s release of the All-Female Oceans 8 alongside Cate Blanchett, Dakota Fanning, Matt Damon and Sandra Bullock, also has the female remake of the 1988 comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels alongside Rebel Wilson on her schedule, as well as Serenity with Matthew McCounaghey. She is also rumoured to be in the forthcoming Barbie movie.
