Protagonist Pictures has released the first image from Chanya Button’s Vita & Virginia, which recently completed filming in Dublin with producers Blinder Films.
Button (Burn Burn Burn) directs 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. Elizabeth Debicki stars as Virginia Woolf, with Gemma Arterton playing Vita Sackville-West. The film will also feature Isabella Rossellini, Rupert Penry-Jones and Peter Ferdinando.
Vita & Virginia is produced by Katie Holly for Blinder Films and Evangelo Kioussis of Mirror Productions, 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 the 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. Protagonist is handling worldwide sales for the drama at American Film Market.