Last holiday season, Netflix found huge success with their dark thriller Bird Box. It didn’t receive good reviews, but the streaming giant reported that over 80 million user accounts watched the film in the first four weeks. It doesn’t matter how good your film is if it’s being watched by that many people (sadly).
Thus it’s no surprise that Netflix is re-teaming with Bird Box star Sandra Bullock for another film. The project is an adaptation of the British miniseries Unforgiven, and Mission: Impossible – Fallout director Christopher McQuarrie will pen the script. Nora Fingscheidt, who just made her directorial debut with Germany’s Oscar entrant System Crasher, will helm the film.
Unforgiven follows Ruth Slater, a woman released from prison after serving time for a violent crime, only to find that she re-enters a society that refuses to forgive her past. The judgement she faces in the outside world affects her mentally, and she realises her only hope for redemption is finding the estranged younger sister she was forced to leave behind.
Suranne Jones played the lead in the miniseries. Sally Wainwright wrote the show, and David Evans directed. Graham King‘s GK Films will produce this adaptation, which was once developed as a starring vehicle for Angelina Jolie.
That synopsis makes Unforgiven sound like a potential awards player. Bullock already has some hardware for her role in The Blind Side, but this role sounds like the kind of complex one that usually gets actors in the Oscar conversation. Netflix continues to target gold statues with the relatively few prestige films they commission.
If awards success is what the streaming giant is hoping for, then they’ve found the right producer in King. He recently produced Oscar winner Bohemian Rhapsody, as well as previous Best Picture winners Argo and The Departed. Expect to see Unforgiven in your Netflix watchlist around this time next year.
#Peace.Love.Unforgiven
