Cate Blanchett is set to star in and produce Sweetsick, Alice Birch’s directorial debut for Searchlight Pictures.
The drama will center on a mercurial woman (Blanchett) with a strange and piercing gift — the ability to see what others most intimately need, often at great personal cost — who sets out on a journey home.
Blanchett has screen credits that include Elizabeth, Carol, Nightmare Alley and Tár. She most recently starred in Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother and in the final season of Netflix’s Squid Game series.
Additional casting will be announced shortly for Sweetsick, which will shoot in the UK and Greece this fall, with Blanchett’s Dirty Films banner producing.
Tessa Ross, Juliette Howell, Theo Barrowclough and Lee Groombridge will also produce, with Film4 executive producing and co-financing.
“I could not be more excited to be making my debut feature as a director with such an extraordinary team of filmmakers and collaborators. I am in the safest hands with Tessa Ross and her brilliant team at House, and am so proud to be working with Searchlight and Film4. To have the peerless Cate Blanchett at the centre of it is thrilling,” Birch said in a statement on Monday.
“We’re all very big believers in Alice Birch and it’s been wonderful to see that the fantastic team she’s gathered around her, not least the amazing Cate, feel the same way — all drawn in by her bold, beautiful vision,” Ross added.
Birch as a screenwriter broke out with Lady Macbeth, and also did the TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People, for which she earned an Emmy nomination.
Blanchett is represented by CAA and Birch by UTA, Davis Law Group, and Giles Smart at United Agents.