Stephenie Meyer Has a New Project
Posted 07.06.11 by Mandy
She's not just a writer anymore. Heat vision reports that author Stephenie Meyer is producing the indie romantic comedy Austenland which is scheduled to start shooting this week in the U.K. This is the first time the Twilight novelist has produced a movie that she did not author.
The movie will star Keri Russell(Waitress), JJ Feild (Captain America: The First Avenger), and Bret McKenzie (HBO's Flight of the Conchords), and will be directed by Jerusha Hess, who wrote Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre.
The movie is an adaptation of the novel by Shannon Hale. Though there isn't an official synopsis yet for the movie, there is one for the book.
Jane is a young New York woman who never seems to find the right man — perhaps because of her secret obsession with Mr. Darcy, as played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. When a wealthy relative bequeaths her a trip to an English resort catering to Austen-obsessed women, however, Jane's fantasies of meeting the perfect Regency-era gentleman suddenly become more real than she ever could have imagined. Is this total immersion in a fake Austenland enough to make Jane kick the Austen obsession for good, or could all her dreams actually culminate in a Mr. Darcy of her own?
While it sounds an awful lot like Bridget Jones's Diary (the novel, anyway) hopefully the Jane Austen-themed amusement park will make it different enough that we don't feel like we've been through all this before.
As far as the casting goes, it's probably fairly safe to assume that Russell will play the main character, Jane, while Feild is said to be cast as a Mr. Darcy actor at Austenland. He's done Austen-related material before as Henry Tilney in a 2007 adaptation of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. This would maybe leave McKenzie as the good guy that Jane belongs with but doesn't give him a chance because he's not Mr. Darcy?
Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Seymour, Rupert Vansittart and James Callis make up the supporting cast.