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Trying Their Luck Once More
The director-actor pair who made Whale Rider in 2002 have begun another intriguing adaptation.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008 at 2:25 PM
By FilmStew Staff
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Picador
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Trading a New Zealand setting for a French one
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Given the fact that 2002’s Whale Rider went on to win nine of its 15 New Zealand Film and TV Awards nominations and earned young star Keisha Castle-Hughes a 2003 Best Actress Academy Award nod (she lost to Monster's Charlize Theron), it makes sense that some of the participants would decide to work together again. And that is just what, finally, is happening.
Hughes and Whale Rider director Niki Caro have begun filming this week an adaptation of the 1998 Elizabeth Knox novel The Vintner’s Luck, which tells the story of a 19th century peasant winemaker in Burgundy, France and his 55-year friendship with an angel that begins in 1808. While Whale Rider was also based on a novel, by Witi Ihimaera, it was one set in the filmmaking pair's native country; Knox's, by contrast, moves the filmmaking pair to a foreign, France setting.
According to the Dominion Post, Caro has also reteamed with her Whale Rider script consultant Joan Schekel, an American actress and writer. Castle-Hughes will play the winemaker’s wife, Celeste, while Belgian actor Jeremie Renier stars as the winemaker.
“It is my first adult role and I was initially quite nervous," the now 18-year-old Castle-Hughes, who in between films had a child, tells the paper. "But now I'm really looking forward to it. It is going to be a challenge, but I love challenges." The film is slated for release in 2009.
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