Cast your mind back to last August, when it was reported that Jesse Eisenberg would be teaming up with Submarine director Richard Ayoade for his next film, inspired by Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Double. Well, we’re sliding that news from the “Rumour” to the “Confirmed” section of our big news tracker board, as he’s now locked in, with Mia Wasikowska on to co-star.
The film won’t be a direct adaptation of the novella, but it will plough a similar furrow: a mundane man (Eisenberg) is driven to near breakdown status when his doppleganger shows up in his life. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Ayoade is promising something funny, frightening and dream-like, a reflection on loneliness and our need to be loved.
He co-wrote the film with Avi Korine (who hatched the original idea) and is set to shoot in Blighty sometime in the spring or summer this year. Film4 is throwing in some of the funding, and the producers are looking to drum up sales at this month’s European Film Market in Berlin.
Wasikowska will next be seen in Stoker and John Hillcoat’s Wettest County, while Eisenberg is at work on magician heist pic Now You See Me. And Ayoade has recently stepped back in front of the camera, having just shot action comedy Neighborhood Watch alongside Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill.