Riding high on the success of The Deep Blue Sea, writer-director Terence Davies has been digging into other projects, including long-cherished pic Sunset Son****g (now in pre-production, with its producers locking down financing) and** Mother Of Sorrows**. But at the Toronto Film Festival, he announced yet another entry on his cinematic To Do list, lining up Cynthia Nixon to play poet Emily Dickinson in a biopic called A Quiet Passion.
Dickinson was famously reclusive later in life, and published only seven poems in her lifetime. But after her death, more than a thousand works were released, and she became known as one of the greatest American poets. The movie will follow her life from precocious schoolgirl to tortured genius.
"I wrote the screenplay with Cynthia in mind," Davies tells the Hollywood Reporter. "It was the kind of dream casting you hope for. I never, for a moment, imagined my wishes would materialize. Cynthia has such a strong feeling for the work – and now she is our Emily Dickinson. I’m over the moon."