Hollywood is a-buzz over reports today that Maggie Gyllenhaal and Hugh Dancy have signed on for the Victorian-era, medical-themed romcom Hysteria. The film charts the pair's fling against the backdrop of the invention of the vibrator, apparently created by a doctor who used it to treat hysteria in women.
Jonathan Pryce will play a physician, who is also Gyllenhaal's character's father; Dancy plays another medic, who, along with a colleague played by Rupert Everett, stumbles upon the discovery.
Says Gyllenhaal: "I play a firecracker whose father is a doctor who is in the business of curing hysterical women. He cures them basically by getting them off and that actually happened. I end up having a sort of unexpected love affair with this guy who works for him, and who by mistake invents the vibrator."
Hysteria will be directed by Tanya Wexler, who has just two film credits to her name, the most recent, Ball in the House, released in 2001. Production is scheduled to begin this October in London and Luxembourg, with plans for a 2011 release.
