What’s not to love about the idea of Olivia Colman playing a “smelly, single and perpetually ridiculed” fisherwoman alongside Dev Patel, who plays her potential husband who is, uh, made from wicker? This premise is already extremely intriguing, but it gets better: The upcoming film Wicker comes from writer-directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, who made the best alien invasion movie of 2020 (and many other years), Save Yourselves!
Wicker is based on the short story “The Wicker Husband” by Ursula Wills-Jones. The film’s summary, per Variety, says:
On the outskirts of a village by the sea, lives a Fisherwoman (Colman); smelly, single and perpetually ridiculed. One day, fed up with her stuffy, small-minded neighbors, she commissions herself a husband to be made from wicker (Patel). In an otherwise conservative town, this unconventional romance sparks outrage, jealousy and chaos.
Colman and Patel are both Oscar nominees; Colman won best actress in 2019 for The Favourite. Patel is especially beloved here at Tor.com for The Green Knight (pictured above), but he has of course been in a host of other films as well, including his breakout role in Slumdog Millionaire.
Filming won’t start on Wicker until next year, which means that unfortunately we will have to be quite patient as we wait for this magical tale to arrive on screens.