Naomie Harris is attached to star in writer-director Claire McCarthy’s indie drama “The Personal History of Rachel Dupree,” which is based on the novel by Ann Weisgarber, TheWrap has learned.
Harris will play a heavily pregnant woman on an isolated, drought-stricken ranch who is forced to take matters into her own hands when she begins to doubt whether she can trust her husband to put his starving family before his own ambitions.
Su Armstrong and Brian Rosen are producing for SixtyFourSixty, while Viola Davis and Julius Tennon serve as executive producers. The film is an Australian/Canadiana co-production, and GFM will begin shopping the project to foreign buyers at Cannes.
On its website Wednesday morning, SixtyFourSixty announced that Harris would re-team with Idris Elba, her co-star in “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.”
But Elba’s reps denied on Wednesday that he is attached to the project — and his involvement was later removed from the production company’s website. He’s represented by WME, the Artists Partnership, Headshell Management and Hertz, Lichtenstein & Young.
The SixtyFourSixty website also offered up a more in-depth synopsis of the project.
“Rachel, heavily pregnant, is holed up in her isolated Badlands ranch with her five starving children. Taunted by secrets and lies from a marriage to a man she barely knows, Rachel finds herself playing an unsettling game of cat and mouse with her husband: she knows her family will never survive the impending bitter winter, and she knows that he will never allow them to leave. Rachel is forced to take matters into her own hands as she takes stock of her choices and prepares to fight for her family’s survival and for values that are worth more than land, ambition and public appearance.”
Harris recently wrapped “Collateral Beauty” with Will Smith and has her own “Jungle Book” movie on the horizon. The “Spectre” actress also stars opposite Ewan McGregor in “Our Kind of Traitor.” She’s repped by WME, Untitled Entertainment, Tavistock Wood Management and Ziffren Brittenham.
For the record: A previous version of this story reported that Idris Elba was attached to co-star in this project. But the actor’s representatives deny the producers’ claims that he will participate.