Elizabeth Banks has at least a dozen potential future projects lined up already, but clearly she didn't think it too many. She's now signed on to star in the wartime drama Rita Hayworth With A Hand Grenade. Sloane U'Ren (Dimensions) is directing, from a screenplay by Antony Neely. Regular Coen Brothers collaborator Robert Graf is producing.
Nothing actually to do with Hayworth, the film will see Banks playing pioneering conflict photographer Caroline Baker (not to be confused with the real-life fashionista behind Nova magazine). In what sounds like a riff on John Boorman's classic Hell In The Pacific, Banks' Baker gets shot down over a Pacific Island (presumably during WWII, given the era suggested by the title) and gets marooned with only a Japanese soldier for company. Over a long 30 years they go from being enemies to reluctant allies facing their predicament together.
“I’m very excited to be working with Elizabeth... on this beautiful story of shared humanity and its triumph over fear and isolation,” says Graf.
Deals are being done as we speak at the American Film Market, with filming pencilled in for the spring of next year. News of who'll play the Toshiro Mifune to Banks' Lee Marvin will no doubt follow shortly.
We'll next see Banks in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, which is out in the UK on November 19.