Landing Florence Pugh for your film is a very big deal right now, as she’s red-hot after only a few years on the public radar. But that’s what happens when your resume has Little Women, Midsommar, and Marvel’s Black Widow on it. So this is quite a coup for award-winning filmmaker Sebastián Lelio, who has cast Pugh in his next film, an adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s The Wonder.
Deadline reports Pugh will star in The Wonder, based on Donoghue’s novel published in 2016. Adapted by Alice Birch, who wrote Pugh’s breakthrough role in Lady Macbeth, the story “is set in Irish Midlands, 1859 and follows an English nurse, Lib Wright (Pugh), who is summoned to a tiny village to observe what some are claiming as a medical anomaly or a miracle – a girl said to have survived without food for months. Tourists have flocked to the cabin of eleven-year-old and a journalist has come down to cover the sensation.”
Lelio is on a bit of a hot streak himself. Ever since his 2013 film Gloria, Lelio has been rolling with Oscar winner A Fantastic Woman, followed by 2018’s underrated drama Disobedience, and 2019’s remake Gloria Bell. He makes movies about strong, complicated women and always gets the best out of his performers, which makes the pairing with Pugh pretty damn exciting.
This will be next for Lelio, pushing aside his sci-fi movie Bride with Scarlett Johansson. As for Pugh, she’s currently shooting Olivia Wilde’s next directorial effort Don’t Worry Darling, and has Zach Braff’s Good Person coming up. Of course, we’ll see her first in Black Widow this summer.
