Starting a couple of years ago, Britain began to publish its own equivalent of the US Black List – the best unproduced scripts of the year. And squarely on the 2009 edition of the Brit List was Simon Aboud’s This Beautiful Fantastic. Now, after some casting changes, the film has cropped up at the American Film Market with Last Chance Harvey’s Joel Hopkins behind the camera and Rhys Ifans, Rupert Friend and Bill Nighy in front of it.
Aboud’s tale follows Bella Brown, a reclusive author who shuns the outside world and spends most of her time compulsively tidying up her flat. But when she ventures out to the local library, she meets Billy, a slapdash inventor who loves chaos and enjoys dashing through the library aisles, much to the chagrin of the librarian.
In its original incarnation, Carey Mulligan was attached as Bella, with Tom Wilkinson, Christopher Eccleston, Mackenzie Crook and Joanna Lumley all on board for Terry Loane to direct.
Now, according to Deadline, there’s no sign of the original cast and crew (though some could still of course be aboard) and no exact word on when it might get filming. It’ll probably depend on whether it cracks open a few wallets to nab some distribution sales this week…