3 competing Bronte sisters’ projects

Like some bizarre tag wrestling team in bonnets, there are now 3 competing Bronte sisters’ projects limbering up for production. Shooting has just started on Focus Features' and BBC Films’ Jane Eyre. It’s the next project from Sin Nombre director Cary Fukanaga. The producers are Alison Owen and Paul Trijbits of Ruby Films. This latest adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel stars Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) and Michael Fassbender (Inglorious Basterds). Judi Dench, Jamie Bell and Sally Hawkins round out the cast.
Fassbender was previously attached to another Bronte adaptation, Wuthering Heights, now due to start filming in May. New director Andrea Arnold wants to cast teenage unknowns in the leads. She’s found somebody she thinks is right for Cathy, but the search is still on for Heathliff. Ecosse Films hasn’t got long before production starts on location in Yorkshire.
And a 3rd Bronte project is a biopic of the Bronte sisters themselves, Jane Eyre-author Charlotte and her sister Emily, who wrote Wuthering Heights. Charles Sturridge, director of TV’s Brideshead Revisited, was going to direct Angela Workman’s script. Now producers Alistair MacLean-Clark and Nick Wild have hired Polly Teale, joint artistic director of the Shared Experience theatre group, to write a new version. They’re sending it out at the end of April with the belief that the story of the family itself is more interesting than their books.