Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy are no strangers to playing real-life people on screen, and they're teaming up for a new biopic. They'll play artist Louis Wain and his wife Emily in a new film named for the man.
Will Sharpe is directing the film, based on a script that began life with Simon Stephenson around 2014 and which Sharpe has worked on since. It'll chronicle the life of Wain, who was born with a cleft lip and kept out of school by his parents until the age of 10. Even when he was allowed to attend, Wain was frequently truant, wandering around London. He eventually attended the West London School of Art, and became a teacher there for a while before becoming a freelance artist, helping to care for his mother and five sisters.
He married Emily, his sisters' governess, who was 10 years his senior, in what was considered a scandalous union at the time. Their marriage was tinged with tragedy, when Emily died three years into their marriage from breast cancer. Wain drew inspiration from Peter, the kitten that the couple rescued and had been a source of comfort for Emily. Starting with more naturalistic cat drawings, Wain would become known for anthropomorphized felines, his imagery cropping up in galleries and on all sorts of merchandise.
Even with his success, Wain remained financially unstable and, in later life, he cycled through institutions with signs of suspected schizophrenia, though that remains a matter of some debate. He died in 1939.
Sharpe will have the cameras rolling in August at Ealing Studios and Studiocanal will release the film in the UK, while Amazon Studios will tackle it in the States.