It seems Stephenie Meyer isn’t content with being the best-selling author of the Twilight series, and now wants to move into film – although as a producer, rather than writer. She’s producing Austenland, which Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess is set to helm. Meyer has served as a producer on the Twilight movies, but this is her first foray into making other movies.
THR has the news, saying that the film will star Keri Russell, J.J. Feild and Bret McKenzie, alongside with supporting cast members Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Seymour, Rupert Vansittart and James Callis. Based on Shannon Hale’s best-selling the book, the movie will be about ‘a single, thirtysomething woman (Russell) with a secret obsession with Mr. Darcy – as played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. The obsession is ruining her love life because no real man can compare. When she decides to spend her life savings on a trip to an English resort catering to Jane Austen-crazed women, the woman’s fantasy of meeting the perfect Regency-era gentleman becomes more real than she could have imagined. Feild is playing a Mr. Darcy actor at Austenland who develops true feelings for the American woman. Coolidge is playing a vain and crude vacationer.’
However whether Firth will make a cameo isn’t known. The film starts shooting in the UK this week.