Just over 80 years ago, a major historical find was uncovered in a field in England. As it turned out, sitting under the soil of Sutton Hoo, Suffolk for centuries was an incredibly-well preserved Anglo-Saxon burial site for a fallen king. After the initial discovery in 1939, it was excavated for over five decades. The tale of its uncovering was given a somewhat fictionalised account in John Preston’s 2007 novel The Dig – which has now been adapted into a starry Netflix film by director Simon Stone.
The screen version casts Ralph Fiennes as archaeologist Basil Brown who makes the discovery – though the site sits on the land of Carey Mulligan’s Edith Pretty. Here’s a very first look at the film, as seen in the new issue of Empire, with Fiennes on the dig site.
“It’s about the unearthing of a lot of things,” producer Gaby Tana tells Empire on set. “It’s a deep excavation into people’s stories.” Read the full set report in The Suicide Squad issue, on sale Thursday 29 October and available to order online here.
Elsewhere, Stone’s film stars Lily James as archaeologist Peggy Preston, who – due to the 1939 setting – finds herself faced with misogynistic notions as a young woman in a male-dominated field. Elsewhere, the cast includes Johnny Flynn, Ben Chaplin, Monica Dolan, and Ken Stott. The Dig is expected to stream on Netflix in 2021.