‘Annette’: Leos Carax’s Oft-Delayed Adam Driver Musical to Start Shooting This Summer
UPDATED: Variety reports that Marion Cotillard has now joined the project, playing the role of Driver’s deceased opera singer wife.
Four years after first being announced, two and a half years since Amazon came on board to distribute the feature, and nearly two years since it reportedly got its third starry leading lady, Leos Carax’s long-gestating and oft-delayed romantic musical “Annette” appears to finally be coming to fruition. Variety reports that the Adam Driver-starring feature is being officially revived and is eyeing a summer start date.
The film will now be produced by Charles Gilbert’s CG Cinema — best known stateside for Olivier Assayas’ Kristen Stewart-starring “Personal Shopper” — and will start shooting this August. Amazon is still expected to release the film in the U.S.
The film is billed as a musical drama about a stand-up comedian whose opera singer wife is deceased. He finds himself alone with his two-year-old daughter who has a surprising gift. While there’s no word yet who will fill the film’s key female lead, a part that over the years has been rumored for talents like Rihanna, Rooney Mara, and Michelle Williams, Driver is still locked into the feature.
Also a major question mark: what presumably young and rising talent will come on board as Driver’s character’s gifted daughter.
As has long been reported, the film will also involve the rock band Sparks, which is composing original songs, and music producer Marius de Vries, who is best known for his work on “La La Land,” “Moulin Rouge,” and “Cats.”
The film will mark Carax’s English-language debut and his first film since 2012’s “Holy Motors,” which was named by IndieWire as one of the best films of the century so far. “I hope to make a film one day that will be music. I wanted life in music, that is what I wanted here,” Carax told IndieWire’s Eric Kohn back in 2012. Finally, it seems, that may actually be happening.
Carax has directed four other features besides “Holy Motors”: “Boy Meets Girl,” “Mauvais Sang,” “Les Amants du Pont-Neuf,” and “Pola X.” Driver is continuing his hot streak, and just last night appeared in Cannes opener “The Dead Don’t Die.” He’ll next be seen in “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” and an untitled Noah Baumbach feature, both out later this year.
