Legendary actress Helen Mirren is set to star as acclaimed author Patricia Highsmith in new thriller Switzerland, which will mirror one of the Tom Ripley novels for which the American novelist was most famous. Anton Corbijn (Control, The American) will direct.
In the film, Highsmith’s solitude in the Swiss Alps is interrupted by Edward, a young literary agent who is sent by the writer’s relentless publishing company to convince her to pen one last novel in her wildly popular Ripley series.
Highsmith uses her famously macabre imagination to scare Edward away, but before they know it a strange collaboration ensues, leaving the world they’ve constructed indistinguishable from their own.
Melbourne based playwright, screenwriter, and novelist Joanna Murray-Smith has written the script, which is based on her play of the same name.
Highsmith is best known for her psychological thrillers which include the Ripley novels, Strangers On A Train, and The Price Of Salt, which became Carol on screen. Her work has been adapted many times for screen, but Switzerland sounds like an interesting meta take on her own work and the art inspired by it.
Highsmith’s uncompromising personal life has also been the subject of many column inches, from her carefree 20s and lesbian affairs, to literary success and later-life rancour, so some of that may make its way into the film as well.
Mirren is coming off Yellowstone spinoff 1923 and will next be seen in Barbie, Fast X, and biopic Golda. This will be Corbijn’s first film since the 2015 James Dean biopic Life.
Additional casting on Switzerland is currently underway, and filming is currently scheduled to take place later this year in Europe.
#Peace.Love.Switzerland
