Fiennes ready to shock as fiendish Trunchbull
Ralph Fiennes is in negotiations to play bullying headmistress agatha Trunchbull in a film version of Matilda the Musical. it is based on Roald Dahl’s novel about a super-bright schoolgirl with magical powers who fights her illtreatment at home and school.
The movie will be directed by Matthew Warchus, who created the original Royal shakespeare Company production at stratford-upon-avon a decade ago with Dennis Kelly, who adapted Dahl’s 1988 book, and Tim Minchin, who wrote the songs. The RsC executive producer andre ptaszynski and a team of investors transferred Matilda to the Cambridge Theatre in 2011, where it remains.
Fiennes has never been in a musical before, though he was courted a few years ago to play henry higgins in a nowiced new film version of My Fair lady.
he displayed evidence of musical chops in the film Bernard and Doris, in which he did a duet with susan sarandon of peggy lee’s i love the Way You’re Breaking My heart.
and in luca Guadagnino’s a Bigger splash, he did some freestyle moves to The Rolling stones number, emotional Rescue. he knows about movement from his time at the Royal academy of Dramatic art, plus he studied rudimentary ballet for his film
The White Crow, about Rudolf nureyev. But as Bertie Carvel — who originated the Trunchbull role brilliantly in the UK and on Broadway — proved, the part requires a great actor to interpret it.
Warchus and his collaborators are also rumoured to be seeking la la land Oscar winner emma stone’s services to play Miss honey, the kindhearted teacher who becomes Matilda’s mentor.
CASTING directors announced a search two weeks ago to find a youngster, no taller than four foot three inches, to play the title role.
Fiennes and Warchus have collaborated before — on God Of Carnage at the Gielgud and The Master Builder at the Old Vic. The sadistic Miss Trunchbull, a national level hammer thrower, thinks all her pupils are rotten — her school’s motto is Bambinatum est Magitum (Children are Maggots) — and has been known to pick up and hurl them great distances when enraged.
Filming begins on the sony and netflix co-production in the late summer.
The hollywood Reporter noted that the film would have a full cinema release in the UK but it will be streamed on netflix elsewhere.
Fiennes will be seen in several movies this year.
he’s reprising his role as M in the new 007 picture no Time To Die, which is released here on april 2, and will also appear in Matthew Vaughn’s WWi feature The King’s Man and simon stone’s The Dig.