Right now Jennifer Lawrence is pretty busy making three Hunger Games movies and having an Oscar, and doing what any good lead actor in a blockbuster film franchise who’s just had her skills acknowledged by what is, for better or worse, one of the biggest movie acting awards we have at the moment. That is, she’s lining up smaller profile projects working with directors that she likes for when she’s not making the movies that make her the big money. And one of those is about the last woman to ever be beheaded in Iceland, convicted murderer Agnes Magnúsdóttir.
Lawrence and fellow The Hunger Games alumni Gary Ross are shopping around an adaptation of Burial Rites, a novel of historical fiction written by Hannah Kent. Kent visited Iceland on an exchange trip during school, and would return to examine what was known of the life of Magnúsdóttir outside of her sentence of death, in 1830, for her part in the murder of two men. Turns out, that’s not a lot, but Kent poured herself into the study, producing Burial Rites as “speculative biography” that establishes the complexity of what is known about Magnúsdóttir, in contrast to legend and folklore.
Lawrence would presumably play the lead role of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, and it sounds like it’d be a fascinating one to watch. Ross and Lawrence have not yet started to shop the production to studios yet, but hopefully one will bite. In the meantime, Universal Pictures has okayed an adaptation of East of Eden featuring both the director and actress. The John Steinbeck novel is apparently one of Ross’ favorites, and he’s tapped Lawrence to play the role of Cathy Ames, the cold, estranged matriarch of the Ames family.
(via Deadline.)
