Anne Hathaway will reprise the role of a US air force pilot tasked with operating an unmanned drone in a film version of Grounded, a play she appeared in off-Broadway. The Oscar winner for Les Misérables will also produce the picture, according to Variety.
Julie Taymor directed Hathaway in the 2015 production of the play by George Brant. No director has yet been locked for the film adaptation.
The one-woman play was first seen in Edinburgh in 2013 and off-Broadway in 2014, followed by Taymor’s collaboration with Hathaway at the Public theatre in New York. Variety reports that Hathaway secured the film rights before her first performance, for which she later earned a nomination for a Critics Circle award.
The production received strong reviews at the time, with the Guardian’s Alexis Soloski calling Hathaway’s performance “consciously chameleonesque”.
“The script demands a heightened performance, especially as the pilot grows increasingly unstrapped from observable reality, and Hathaway delivers,” she wrote. “Monomania is one of her specialties, and she goes full throttle here.”
The ethics of drone warfare were also the subject for Eye in the Sky, Gavin Hood’s thriller starring Helen Mirren and the late Alan Rickman, which is one of the highest-grossing independent films of the year in the US.
Hathaway will reappear as the White Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass, Disney’s sequel to Tim Burton’s blockbuster Alice in Wonderland. She last starred in the Nancy Meyers’ romantic comedy The Intern, opposite Robert De Niro.
