3 weeks ago
EXCLUSIVE: FirstGen, a accumulation institution pinch credits including Mona Fastvold’s caller Searchlight flick The Testament of Ann Lee, is processing a characteristic adjustment of nan novel The Third Hotel by Laura van den Berg.
Michelle Garza Cervera has boarded to direct, pinch Isa Mazzei group to accommodate nan screenplay.
Published successful 2018, The Third Hotel follows Clare, a caller widow who travels to Latin America weeks aft her hubby Richard’s mysterious death, driven by nan request to understand her domiciled successful his early passing. Lost successful a new, unfamiliar city, she spots a man successful nan street, and it’s not conscionable personification who looks for illustration Richard, it’s him successful nan flesh. What originates arsenic a skeptical pursuit of Richard’s double quickly devolves into an all-consuming obsession, unraveling Clare’s grip connected reality and pulling her into a liminal nightmare wherever she is suspended betwixt nan surviving and nan dead.
A psychological scary and a enigma baked into one, nan caller was a finalist for nan New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and received captious praise from nan likes of Time, The New Yorker, NPR and The New York Times Book Review.
In a connection connected nan project, head Cervera said, “I’m truthful thrilled to activity connected an adjustment of specified an eerie and superb caller alongside Isa Mazzei, whose activity I’m a existent instrumentality of, and FirstGen, who person made films I love. I’m honored to beryllium portion of it.”
Mazzei commented on The Third Hotel, “The book is wonderfully surreal and profoundly unsettling successful a measurement that lingered pinch me. I’m excited to beryllium capable to construe that emotion into a cinematic experience, and I consciousness fortunate to beryllium collaborating pinch specified a thoughtful and talented team.”
Michael D’Alto of FirstGen added, “This is simply a awesome imaginative squad adapting a haunting and beautiful book. We are honored to activity pinch them to actualize their vision, and can’t hold for everyone to spot this film.”
A Mexico City-based filmmaker whose debut feature, Huesera: The Bone Woman, won nan Best New Narrative Director and Nora Ephron Awards successful its 2022 premiere astatine Tribeca, Cervera is repped by Untitled Entertainment, WME and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole.
Mazzei is champion known for penning and producing Blumhouse/Netflix’s Cam, for which she and Daniel Goldhaber were awarded Best Screenplay and Best First Feature astatine nan Fantasia Film Festival. She besides produced nan Neon thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline and astir precocious co-wrote and produced Faces of Death, which marked IFC’s largest theatrical merchandise to date. She is repped by Anonymous Content and Gang, Tyre, Ramer.
Van den Berg is besides known for nan novel Find Me, arsenic good arsenic nan communicative collections I Hold a Wolf by nan Ears, The Isle of Youth and What nan World Will Look Like When All nan Water Leaves Us. She is repped by Curtis Brown Group.
In summation to The Testament of Ann Lee, nan humanities philharmonic starring Amanda Seyfried arsenic nan founding leader of nan Shaker Movement, FirstGen’s caller credits see Andrea Arnold’s Bird (Mubi), starring Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, and Dan Minahan’s On Swift Horses (Sony Pictures Classics), starring Jacob Elordi, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Diego Calva and Will Poulter.
