Rosamund Pike is attached to star as Marie Curie in “Radioactive,” a Working Title production directed by France’s Marjane Satrapi (“Persepolis”) and fully-financed by StudioCanal.
“Radioactive” is adapted by one of the U.K.’s hottest young writers, Jack Thorne, from “Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout,” Lauren Redniss’ biography of Marie and Pierre Curie. Mixing dream-like saturated color drawings and short texts, the book captures the Curies’ “fairy-tale” life story, as Redniss writes, their love, recorded by Curie, their scientific discovery of radioactivity, and the long shadow that would be cast over their lives — and the modern world.
Thorne wrote Julia Roberts’ “Wonder,” the Tom Harper-directed “Aeronauts” and hit stage play “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.”
“This is not a biopic, but a love story, set at a tremendous time of change, capturing a woman who is amazing, brilliant and quite charming, and the only woman of the time capable of being accepted by the scientific establishment,” said Didier Lupfer, StudioCanal chairman-CEO.
“Marie Curie was such a natural force of life. everybody, everywhere she went was effected by her energy and brilliance,” said Satrapi. “This is an intense role which require a lot of intelligence and sensibility. Rosamund is ‘the one’ to play her. I understood it the second I met her.”
Added Ron Halpern, Studiocanal EVP, international production and acquisitions, “Rosamund speaks about the subject and character in such an intelligent way and is fascinated by the character and time. For this role, we needed a strong woman like Rosamund who could convey the intelligence, determination and courage of Marie Curie. With Marjane they make a powerful duo of women.”
“Radioactive’s” other two key roles — Pierre Curie, and Paul Langevin, the younger lover Marie Curie took some years after Pierre’s death — are out to cast.
Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Paul Webster produce.
The colors of the graphic novel, Satrapi’s own background as an animated feature director on “Persepolis,” and Marie Curie’s own sense of color and light in describing her discoveries, all suggest that that visuals will play a key and distinctive role in the film.
Pike was Oscar-nominated for “Gone Girl” and most recently completed “Hostiles,” opposite Christian Bale and Ben Foster, “Entebbe” directed by Jose Padilha, and Brad Anderson’s “High Wire Act,” opposite Jon Hamm. She has just been cast as U.S. war reporter Marie Colvin in the Matthew Heineman-directed “A Private War” and is currently appearing in Cedric Jimenez’s “The Man with the Iron Heart,” where she plays Lina Heydrich, wife of Reinhard Heydrich, the mastermind of the “Final Solution.”
Pike is repped by Magnolia’s Shelley Browning, CAA and Dallas Smith at United Agents.
After “Persepolis,” which won a Cannes Special Jury Prize, Satrapi went on to direct “Chicken With Plums” and “The Voices.”
Redniss’ book was a 2011 National Book Award finalist, the first non-fiction graphic narrative to achieve that recognition.
Satrapi is repped by UTA, Thorne by Rob Carlson, also at UTA.
