Emma Thompson, Ellen Burstyn, Gaia Wise to co-star in Livia De Paolis femme-focused ‘Peter Pan’ spin-off ‘The Lost Girls’

Posted by Brandy McDonnell on Sep 30, 2019 | 0 comments

Oscar winners Ellen Burstyn and Emma Thompson, along with Thompson’s daughter Gaia Wise, are set to co-star in the film adaptation of “The Lost Girls,” a femme-focused coming-of-age spin-off on J.M. Barrie’s classic tale of “Peter Pan.”

Deadline reports that Livia De Paolis, who wrote, directed and starred in the 2014 low-budget feature “Emoticon ;-),” will do the same on “The Lost Girls,” the 2003 novel by Laurie Fox that follows multiple generations of Darling women who have life-changing encounters with The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.

Here is the synopsis of the novel (from the Kindle edition):

Wendy has long heard the family legend — madness strikes the Darling women at a certain age, traditionally after romance visits in the form of an overgrown boy. The Darling girl will fall in love, the boy will desert, and the girl is left on her heels, heartbroken and flirting ever after with lunacy’s lure. Wendy knows she should be grateful for her childhood adventure, but instead she finds herself adrift; resenting the heartache-turned-eccentricity of her mother; envious of the oddball antics of her Great-Nana; and consumed by the mystery of her grandmother Jane, whose disappearance following her own youthful romance remains unsolved.

When Wendy falls in love with Freeman, an exuberant and irreverent man-child himself, she finds herself perpetuating the pattern she thought she had missed. And then along comes her daughter, Berry, the precocious but sullen child with the eyes of a sage. When it is Berry’s time to go off to The Neverland, Wendy, like so many mothers before her, questions who she has become. Is she “barking mad”? Is Berry?

Wendy’s journey to self-realization takes flight from the themes suggested in the classic novel “Peter Pan.” Fox’s dazzling prose and elegant insights into love and loss make this story universal; the characters and their heartache make this novel deeply personal. “The Lost Girls” contemplates the contradictory human yearnings for freedom and safety, flight and stability in a moving and ultimately uplifting story of motherhood, love, and reenchantment that speaks to women of all ages.

“I have been fascinated with the hidden meanings of fairy tales since childhood, so when I read Laurie Fox’s novel ‘The Lost Girls’ I was immediately on board with the way she reinvents J.M. Barrie’s timeless fairytale for a contemporary audience,” said De Paolis, per Deadline.

De Paolis, whose family ran Rome’s famous De Paolis Studio, will star as Wendy, a descendant of the original Wendy Darling of Barrie’s tale. Like her grandmother (Burstyn) and mother (Thompson) before her, Wendy struggles to break Peter Pan’s hold on her after her time with him in Neverland, according to Deadline. (From the casting in this initial report, it seems the film might condense the story into four generations rather than the novel’s five generations.)

As her daughter Berry (Wise) comes into Peter’s world, Wendy must fight to save her relationship with her daughter while also coming to terms her family’s fantastical legacy.

“The Lost Girls” will be the biggest role to date for Wise,; who has previously appeared alongside her mother in the films “A Walk in the Woods” and “Last Chance Harvey.”

According to Deadline, Myriad Pictures will handle international sales on the project and will co-represent U.S. sales with UTA Independent Film Group. Producers are Chris Curling (“The Last Station”) and Meta Valentic (“Ladrón Que Roba a Ladrón”). Peter Touche of Ingenious Media helped develop the project and is executive producing with Myriad’s Kirk D’Amico.

“We are delighted to be working with the producers and with writer / director Livia de Paolis who has a vision for this retelling of the ‘Peter Pan’ story in the Me Too era. The strong material has attracted an equally strong cast including Emma Thompson and Gaia Wise and others to be added soon,” D’Amico said, per Deadline.

-BAM

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