Screen International is reporting that Elizabeth Debicki is replacing Eva Green in Vita & Virginia, which is being produced by Blinder Films’ Katie Holly.
Chanya Button (Burn Burn Burn) will direct the film, from a script by Dame Eileen Atkins, based on her play of the same name. The film will follow the romance and friendship between authors Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. Sackville-West is best known for her pastoral epic, The Land (1927), and as the inspiration for the androgynous protagonist in Woolf’s novel Orlando (1928).
In 1994, the play Vita and Virginia ran Off-Broadway, at Union Square Theater, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Atkins. Debicki will star as Virginia Woolf, with Gemma Arterton playing Vita Sackville-West. The film will also feature Isabella Rossellini, Rupert Penry-Jones and Peter Ferdinando.
In addition to Holly, Evangelo Kioussis of Mirror Productions produces, with Arterton, Simon Baxter, Christopher Figg, Nicolas Sampson, Norman Merry, and Dave Bishop as executive producers. Finance comes from the Irish Film Board, Piccadilly Pictures, Sampsonic Media and Lipsync Productions.
Thunderbird Releasing has taken UK and Irish rights, with deals done with NFP for Germany, Transmission Films for Australia/New Zealand, Cinemart for Czech/Slovak, MCF for Former Yugoslavia, Seven Films for Greece, Edko for Hong Kong, Forum Films for Israel, M2 for Poland, and Lusumundo for Portugal.
Principal photography will commence on Vita and Virginia in Ireland in September.