Since breaking through with** A Royal Affair **and Anna Karenina, Alicia Vikander has been on an enviable run of good gigs. That streak shows no sign of slowing down, as she’s close to a deal to join The Light Between Oceans and is the top choice for **The Danish Girl.
The Light Between Oceans, as you may already know, boasts Derek Cianfrance adapting M.L. Steadman’s novel, with Michael Fassbender starring. Vikander would co-star in the story about a lighthouse keeper and his wife living on a remote, windswept island of the coast of Australia. When they find a baby in a rowboat after a particularly nasty storm, they start to raise it as their own, but it proves to be a test for both of them, not to mention their morality.
As for The Danish Girl, that has Les Miserables’ Tom Hooper teaming back up with Eddie Redmayne for a film inspired by a true story. Based on a 2000 account by David Ebershoff, it’ll chronicle Einar Wegener's life as he became the first man to undergo a sex change operation in the early 1930s, becoming Lili Elbe. Currently scripted by Lucinda Coxon, this one has been developing for a few years, with Nicole Kidman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Charlize Theron and director Thomas Alfredson all attached at various points. We're assuming that Vikander would play Gerda Gottlieb, who married Wegener in 1904 and illustrated fashion magazines, using her husband as a model for women's clothing.
Hooper intends the shoot the film in the autumn, and Vikander – or, more accurately, her managers – are cracking open the diaries to make sure she can shoot both films. She’s already busy: Vikander has recently worked on Son Of A Gun, Ex Machina, Seventh Son, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Tulip Fever, which is currently shooting.