Magnet Releasing, the genre arm of Magnolia Pictures, has acquired the U.S. rights to “Baby Ruby,” a psychological thriller film that stars “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” actress Noémie Merlant and “Game of Thrones” star Kit Harington.
“Baby Ruby” is the feature directorial debut of playwright Bess Wohl (“Small Mouth Sounds,” “Grand Horizons”) and made its world premiere at this year’s Toronto Film Festival. Magnet plans to release the film some time next year.
“Baby Ruby” tells the story of Jo (Merlant), a successful, French lifestyle entrepreneur who is happily pregnant, awaiting the arrival of her first child. But soon after Jo welcomes her new baby girl Ruby home, something starts to feel off — even though she’s assured it’s all perfectly normal.
The film grapples with themes of postpartum depression and uses the psychological thriller and horror genre trappings to show Merlant’s character fighting to protect both herself and her baby, finding suspicious and unusual friendships from neighborhood moms, losing sleep and going through a waking fever dream or slowly losing trust in both her husband (Harington) or her cloying mother-in-law.
Wohl in speaking with TheWrap out of TIFF said the film was a reflection on her own parenthood journey and that it was inspired by “the massive identity shift that happens when you become a mom.”
“I just wanted to make a film about the highs and the lows, and push the experience out to the most extreme version of itself,” she told TheWrap out of the festival. “That’s what I like to do as an artist: take a little glimmer and light a bonfire with it.”
A page fifty-four pictures and Point Productions production, “Baby Ruby” is directed and written by Bess Wohl and produced by Alex Saks, Lauren Beveridge, Brett Beveridge and Jeffrey Penman. In addition to Merlant and Harington, the cast includes Meredith Hagner and Jayne Atkinson.
“Bess Wohl shows how terrifying the pursuit of a ‘perfect life’ can be,” Magnolia President Eamonn Bowles said in a statement. “Noémie Merlant convincingly inhabits the role of a woman who has it all.”
The deal was negotiated by Magnolia EVP Dori Begley and SVP of Acquisitions John Von Thaden, with Glen Basner at FilmNation Entertainment.
Deadline first reported the news.
