In May, it was reported that Ellen Page would star in a dramatic feature-length version of “Freeheld,”an Oscar-winning short documentary by Cynthia Wade (she won the Oscar for best doc short in 2008).
The screenplay, written by Ron Nyswaner (“Philadelphia,” “The Painted Veil”) is naturally based on same true story as the short, which chronicles the life of a New Jersey car mechanic (Page) and her older, police detective girlfriend, Laurel Hester, who battle to secure Hester’s pension benefits after she is diagnosed with a terminal cancer.
No word on who will play the older woman yet and there was no director attached. Until now. In an interview with Collider, Page told the movie site that “Twilight” director Catherine Hardwicke is attached to direct (the connecting dot: Nyswaner wrote Hardwicke’s “Haml3t” adaptation). But it does sound a little ways off and still in development. “In regards to things being absolutely cemented, there’s nothing, but there are things in development,” she said of the project and other gestating ones. Plus Hardwicke is shooting “Red Riding Hood” soon for a March 11, 2011 release.
Page also says she’s writing her own screenplay and spoke a little bit about Michel Gondry’s “Return Of The Ice Kids,” which we first confirmed her involvement in when we spoke to Gondry at SXSW.
“It would be an absolute dream come true,” Page said if ‘Ice Kids’ finally came together noting it was a project she hopes to do in the “not too-distant future.” “I’m crazy about him.”
“It has a script, but it didn’t feel completely ready,” she said of its status noting he then became busy with “The Green Hornet, though Keith Bunin (“In Treatment”) has been brought on to revise it last we heard. “And it’s about young, individual students at MIT and they have this secret underground situation where they develop their own inventions and one of them involves water that when you drink it you hear music. Obviously there’s a lot more to it.”
Page hinted that the script is hard to make sense of at first, but she’s making a leap of faith in the director regardless. “It’s one of those scripts, [where you think], ‘I trust this, just because it’s Michel,’ ” she said. “I really hope that it comes back in the picture.”
Page also notes that the title may have changed, but either way, listen to the interview over at Collider and you’ll get a good sense that it’s still a project that might be a few years off. If all goes according to plan, Gondry is directing, “The We & The I,” next.
