Keira Knightley has been out to challenge herself recently. She’s just started her first starring role in a West End play, even though she knew she was likely to be pilloried by the press, and now The Playlist suggests that she’s taking on the lead in David Cronenberg’s new movie, The Talking Cure.
Until recently, Cronenberg was planning to make The Matarese Circle, but with Tom Cruise opting to make Knight & Day instead, that one died in development. Then there was talk of him filming Cosmopolis next, but it appears it may be the adaptation of the Christopher Hampton play that’s been shuffled to the top of the list.
Along with Keira, Cronenberg has also recruited Christoph Waltz and Michael Fassbender for the movie, which is about founding fathers of psychoanalysis, Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, and their complicated relationship with a brilliant and beautiful patient, Sabina Spielrein, who has been driven mad by her past.
The news comes via a rather circuitous route, as rather than Cronenberg or the production company behind The Talking Cure telling people what’s going on, Australian distributor Hopscotch Films made the announcement on their Facebook page, because they’ve purchased the rights to release the movie in Oz. It certainly suggests that if the makers are already raising funding, a shoot is planned relatively soon, but we’ll have to wait for more news before it’s all official.