by Murtada Elfadl
TIFF is not only about the films that are playing there. It’s also about the deals for the films that we might see next year or the year after. Or maybe never hear of again if they don’t secure financing. We’ve already told you about the Matthias Schoenaerts-Margot Robbie starrer Ruin. Here are three other film - or packages if we were to use the vulgar industry term - that are at TIFF looking for financing:
Phyllis Nagy directing Gemma Arterton as Dusty Springfield
The film is titled So Much Love and Carol’s screenwriter is also writing it. Set in 1968, when at the peak of her popularity, Springfield travelled to Tennessee to record the album Dusty in Memphis. An official synopsis reads:
It will follow her as she navigates her way through the politics of the recording studio and the city, and will also explore her encounter with the music of Motown, her stand against apartheid policies during her aborted South African tour and her thorny brushes with men in the music industry.
Penelope Cruz and Olivier Assayas tackle the Cold War
Gael Garcia Bernal, Edgar Ramirez, Wagner Maura and Cruz will star in Assayas’ next, Wasp Network. The story is about a spy network set up by the Cuban government in the 1980s and ’90s to infiltrate anti-Castro organizations in the United States. It's a reunion for current Versace Emmy nominees Cruz and Ramirez.
Mia Wasikowska and Robert Pattinson are the new Gosling-Stone
We joke but they are working together for the third time after Maps to the Stars (2014) and this year’s Damsel. And again it’s an indie, this time working with Christine’s Antonio Campos in The Devil All The Time. They are joined by superheroes Tom Holland and Chris Evans in a story set in Knockemstiff, Ohio, and being sold as “a storm of faith, violence and redemption.” Sounds intense.