While it seemed Sam Mendes was going to follow up Revolutionary Road and Away We Go, his ‘marriages under a magnifying glass’ double bill, with the next Bond film, or perhaps a trip to OZ with Robert Downey Jr., it looks as though he is returning to more familiar ground with his next film.
Focus Features have him primed to take on Ian McEwan’s novella On Chesil Beach, a painfully English tragicomedy of the fallout of consummation and its effects on a newly married couple.
Of course the current darling of the silver screen, Carey Mulligan, is having her named dropped in the mix as well, and apparently Mendes and Mulligan are talking.
After An Education Mulligan’s name orbits most projects requiring a young woman, My Fair Lady and David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo being just two recent, and totally unsubstantiated, examples. However she would fit in pretty perfectly with the married woman in the novel, and as long as they find a leading man to equal her (Andrew Garfield, I’m looking at you…) then Mendes can complete his trilogy of muddled marriages.
McEwan will be adapting his novella, and On Chesil Beach follows Atonement and Enduring Love onto the silver screen as examples of impressive adaptations.
All of this comes to us from Deadline, who also mention Mendes directing a stage musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
