Joe Wright and the story's rapscallion Count Vronsky, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, share a tender moment during the set-up for one of the film's soirées. The cast were braced for a traditional spin on Leo Tolstoy's novel, absorbing a Tom Stoppard script that charted Anna's travails through the ornate, cavernous palaces of Moscow and chilly St. Petersburg. Wright, however, had a better idea. He threw the kind of 11th hour switcheroo that can have producers reaching for the valium. The new plan? To house virtually all the action in a theatre built on Stage C of Shepperton Studios, home to Atonement's hospital scenes.