Jessica Chastain’s “Secret Scripture” finds helmer

PanARMENIAN.Net - Thaddeus O’Sullivan has come aboard to direct The Secret Scripture, a drama which has Jessica Chastain and Vanessa Redgrave attached to star, The Hollywood Reporter said.

Noel Pearson, who produced My Left Foot, is producing the adaptation of the award-wining Sebastian Barry novel.

Voltage Pictures, which financed and sold the Oscar-nominated Dallas Buyers Club, is in final negotiations to come aboard as the sales agent for the project, which will be selling in Berlin.

The Ireland-centric story centers on a 100-year old woman who has been in a mental hospital since World War Two and with the facility closing, a psychiatrist tries to piece together why the woman is there, not knowing she has been hiding a diary under the floorboards.

Chastain and Redgrave are to play younger and older versions of the woman, detailing the scars the Presbyterian woman suffered during Ireland’s civil war and her harsh abuse by a priest.

O’Sullivan is an Irish director who may be best known for helming Into the Storm, which starred Brendan Gleeson as Sir Winston Churchill. It was nominated for 12 Emmies, winning two, and was also nominated for two Golden Globes.

He also directed The Heart of Me, an award-winning drama that starred Paul Bettany, Helena Bonham Carter and Olivia Williams.