Baz Luhrmann to Direct Joan of Arc Feature
Baz Luhrmann has officially confirmed his next film: an epic about Joan of Arc.
The auteur is reuniting with Warner Bros. after 2022’s “Elvis” for the upcoming feature centered on the real-life French woman who believed she was divinely led to captain an army during the Hundred Years’ War. The feature is slated to be titled either “Jehanne” or “Jehanne d’Arc.”
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Deadline first reported the news, which IndieWire has confirmed. Warner Bros. had no comment.
“Jehanne d’Arc” will cast a young woman in “the ultimate teenage girl coming of age story, set in the Hundred Years’ War,” as the casting announcement read in Deadline.
Interestingly enough, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” star Jenna Ortega recently told Letterboxd that Joan of Arc is among her dream roles. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is also a Warner Bros. film.
Ortega selected “The Passion of Joan of Arc” among her four favorite films. “Renée Falconetti’s performance in that is absolutely insane,” Ortega said. “I feel like a dream character for me would be Joan of Arc.”
As for Luhrmann, after “Elvis” he returned to his 2008 epic “Australia.” The filmmaker recut the sprawling film for it to be re-released as a Hulu limited series titled “Faraway Downs.” The feature followed an English aristocrat (Nicole Kidman) who inherits a cattle range run by a cattle drover (Hugh Jackman). The limited series will have a new ending and a new soundtrack; “Australia” originally shot three endings, with only one making it into the theatrical release.
“I was inspired to re-approach my film ‘Australia’ to create ‘Faraway Downs’ because of the way episodic storytelling has been reinvigorated by the streaming world,” Luhrmann said in a press statement. “With over two million feet of film from the original piece, my team and I were able to revisit anew the central themes of the work.”
Luhrmann co-wrote, directed, and produced “Australia,” which had an almost three-hour runtime and was a box office flop. Luhrmann said upon the announcement of “Faraway Downs” that the original film was intended to be a “sweeping, ‘Gone With the Wind’-style epic and turn it on its head — a way of using romance and epic drama to shine a light on the roles of First Nations people and the painful scar in Australian history of the ‘Stolen Generations.’”
Reporting by Brian Welk.
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