One of Hollywood’s hottest – and yet least well-known development denizens is finally emerging blinking into the sunlight.
After 25 years, an adaptation of DM Thomas’ critically loved novel The White Hotel will finally go ahead, with an unknown producer and an indie writer-director at the helm.
Simon Monjack is the man who has written the script and will call the shots, with money they’ve mostly raised from private companies and investors.
Through the years, the adaptation has attracted the likes of Bernardo Bertolicci, David Lynch, Terrence Malick, Pedro Almodovar and David Cronenberg. And stars who’ve flirted with the idea of starring include Anthony Hopkins, Meryl Streep, Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett.
But enough of the history lesson. What of the plot? The drama follows an opera singer who asks Sigmund Freud for help in 1920’s Vienna . It seems she’s plagued by weird dreams about a white hotel (you says the title, you wins the prize). Eventually, she becomes the shrink’s famous case study, known only as Anna G. and her brain is not just filled with visions of the hotel – she also predicted several major events, including the Holocaust.
There’s no cast yet, but with the star power already interested, we doubt they’ll have too much trouble attracting some decent names for a shooting schedule in Prague, Milan and Latvia, which is supposed to kick off in October.