Blanchett, Bana, Ronan in Joe Wright's 'Hanna'

Atonement director Joe Wright hopes to rebound from the misfire of The Soloist (which I had taken to call The So-Soloist) with Hanna, which Focus Features describes an an adventure thriller. It will also be the "biggest production yet" for the Universal arthouse label, according its top guy James Schamus, and it certainly has a cast to match. Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett, and Eric Bana will lead the ensemble, and Niels Arestrup, who plays a pivotal role in the foreign language epic Un Prophète, has just inked a deal to co-star. Here's our Prophète review, by the way. Arestrup won the Best Supporting Actor César award for his work in that film. The only drawback I see is that, in the Focus press release, there's a chronology of how many drafts the script has been through. At least five attempts have been made to punch up Seth Lochhead's original screenplay. That can work, but very often a screenplay that goes through four separate writers has a few potholes. We'll hope that's not the case.I think Joe Wright could be a major director for quite a while, as much of a step back as his last film was. But Atonement proved - to me, anyway - that if you give the guy enough to work with he can make a fantastic film. And it was only his second movie, so there's plenty of room for growth. Here's the synopsis for Hanna:

Hanna (Ronan) is a teenage girl. Uniquely, she has the strength, the stamina, and the smarts of a solider; these come from being raised by her father (Bana), an ex-CIA man, in the wilds of Sweden. Living a life unlike any other teenager, her upbringing and training have been one and the same, all geared to making her the perfect assassin. The turning point in her adolescence is a sharp one; sent into the world by her father on a mission, Hanna journeys stealthily across Europe while eluding agents dispatched after her by a ruthless intelligence operative with secrets of her own (Blanchett). As she nears her ultimate target, Hanna faces startling revelations about her existence and unexpected questions about her humanity."

Filming begins next week on the continent. There's no release date yet, but Focus has a few films that could figure prominently in next year's awards sweepstakes. I don't know if this will be one of them, but it sounds like it could be a good fall-back option if nothing else.

Comments

[Corran Horn]

Apparently, the Seth Lochead version, while providing a solid action story, felt rather thin, so David Farr (who wrote some episodes for the BBC series MI-5) was brought in to revise it. His draft was given some solid praise from the occasionally hard-to-please Playlist.

http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2010/02/details-on-new-much-improved-version-of.html

I think the revisions by Penhall and Wright were probably just touch-ups, so I wouldn't be that concerned yet.