david auburn Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Expect Sigourney Weaver to receive an Oscar nod for her work in The Girl in the Park, which got a warm reception at this year's Toronto fest. Weaver plays Julia Sandburg, a 40-something business executive and mother of two, including a toddler named Maggie. Julia's life, which we can sense has been planned down to the smallest detail, is unexpectedly shipwrecked when, during routine playtime in a park one day, Maggie goes missing under her nose. The child is not found, and her disappearance is tied to a string of similar abductions in the area, leaving practically no hope. Cut to fifteen years later -- Julia now looks to be in her late 50s and has spent the last fifteen years living a solitary, robotic existence, the disappearance having disintegrated her marriage, poisoned her relationship with her remaining child, and taken a toll on her mental health. Existing more or less as a shut-in these past years, her own relatives, including her son and new daughter-in-law, can hardly believe it when she turns up at a family function.

The son and daughter-in-law, played by Alessandro Nivola and Keri Russell, are budding suburbanites who are planning for a new child and have no intention of living their lives in the past, but the past is the only place Julia feels safe, and there seems to be little prospect of her returning to any kind of social normalcy. This is the lay of the land when Louise comes into the picture. A sleazy drifter and scam-artist in her young twenties, played effectively by Superman's dame Kate Bosworth, Louise meets Julia in the city by chance and picks up on her vulnerability, perhaps sensing she's some old, lonely lesbian who can be taken for a ride and cleaned out or more simply, someone who will feel sorry for her. During their first meeting, Louise gives Julia a phoney tale of woe, and in the space of a few minutes, Julia has her checkbook out and is shelling out for travel fare and medical expenses for an unborn child (which doesn't exist.) Louise then wisely disappears, but their interaction isn't over yet.

Apparently, there's at least one other film besides Battle in Seattle looking for actors at the moment. Although, with all the recent casting news for that film, I'm kinda surprised there are any actors left who are actually looking for work. Luckily for Pulitzer-Prize-winning writer David Auburn, there are still one or two talented thespians left to come aboard his writing/directing debut -- the psychological thriller The Girl in the Park.

According to production weekly, Keri Russell, Alessandro Nivola and Elias Koteas have now been cast in The Girl in the Park -- which tells the story of a woman permanently traumatized by the disappearance of her daughter who then meets a troubled young woman that may or may not be the daughter she thought was long dead. As Matt reported previously, these newest additions to The Girl in the Park cast join Sigourney Weaver and Kate Bosworth who are already attached to the film playing the traumatized woman and the troubled young woman respectively.

First-time helmer Auburn is best known for his play Proof, which won both the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2000. More recently, he adapted his play Proof for the screen and scripted the film The Lake House starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. Auburn is obviously a talented writer -- but I gotta be honest and say I wasn't exactly blown away by The Lake House or Proof. That said, both those films were in the hands of other directors, not Auburn. With Auburn in charge of his own material this time, and with the cast he's assembled, perhaps he'll end up with a much better film in the end. Shooting on The Girl in the Park is scheduled to start November 13th in New York.

On the heels of good reviews for her work in The Devil Wears Prada, Emily Blunt has joined the cast of A Walk in the Park, the directorial debut of Tony and Pulitzer-winning playwright (Proof) David Auburn. The film stars Susan Sarandon (who played opposite Blunt in the straight-to-video release Irresistible) as Julia Sandburg, a woman who, on the heels of the disappearance of her three-year-old daughter fifteen years before, "has cut herself off from anyone once near and dear to her." When she stumbles upon a troubled girl named Louise (Blunt) -- in a park, one assumes -- emotions pour out all over the place, and Sandburg is unable to shake the absurd hope that Louise might be her long-lost daughter. Also featured in the screenplay are Sandburg's estranged ex-husband and son, but those roles have not yet been cast.

A Walk in the Park is scheduled to begin film this fall in New York.