Samara Weaving is going from ninjas to nocturnes.
The actress, who plays G.I. Joe heroine Scarlett in Paramount and Hasbro’s upcoming Snake Eyes, will star opposite Kelvin Harrison Jr. in Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a true-life period drama directed by Stephen Williams for Searchlight.
Element Pictures, which is working with the studio on Yorgos Lanthimos’ newest project, Poor Things, is producing.
With an original script by Stefani Robinson — an Emmy-nominated writer-producer on Atlanta and What We Do in the Shadows — Chevalier centers on Joseph Bologne, or the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, who is known as the Black Mozart.
Born in the Caribbean, Bologne was the illegitimate son of a plantation owner and a slave who was then educated in France and became a fencing master, which served as an entrée into French high society. With his music and operas, he ascended to the upper echelons of Marie Antoinette’s Paris society until a court scandal laid him low.
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Playing the female opposite to Harrison (Luce, Waves), Weaving takes on the role of Marie-Josephine, a woman who yearns for creative fulfillment outside of her empty, loveless marriage and defies her controlling husband to become the voice of Bologne’s opera.
Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe at Element Pictures are producing, as are Robinson and Dianne McGunigle.
Overseeing are Searchlight’s director of production Zahra Phillips and creative executive Cornelia Burleigh.
The project returns Weaving to Searchlight, for whom she starred in her 2019 breakout, comedy-horror hit Ready or Not. The actress just booked a role in Damien Chazelle’s newest feature, Babylon, which features an all-star cast including Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie. She recently wrapped a starring turn opposite Eugenio Derbez in the remake of French comedy The Valet.
Weaving is repped by WME, Untitled Entertainment and Gang Tyre.
