Roman Polanski is once again raiding Broadway’s stages for film fodder. The director – who most recently turned God Of Carnage into the film Carnage – is now targeting David Ives’ Venus In Fur.
He’s already lined up Emmanuelle Seigner (AKA Mrs Polanski) and Louis Garrel to star in the French-language version of the play, an erotic black comedy.
The plot revolves around a playwright-director who's trying to stage a work based on Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s 1870 book Venus In Furs. After a frustrating session trying to find the right actress with little success, he’s stunned when the seemingly perfect candidate bursts through the door. But she’s a strong personality, and soon the balance of power between them begins to shift…
“I’ve been looking for a chance to make a film in French with Emmanuelle for a long time,” Polanski said in a statement picked up by the Hollywood Reporter. “Reading Venus In Fur, I realized the moment had arrived.”
Polanski has apparently decided to this to fill time while he waits for another gestating project to be ready. “I got so fired up to put this brilliant black comedy on film that I decided to fit it in before D**.**, whose screenplay and preproduction will demand a few more months.” That one was announced back in May and chronicles the historical tale of the notorious Dreyfus affair, where a Jewish French officer who was wrongly accused of passing secrets to the Germans in the 1890s.
Polanski will adapt **Venus **with Ives, and is no doubt hoping for the same level of success that the play has achieved. It got nominated for a Best Play Tony and scored a win for stage lead Nina Arianda. Filming is set for Paris in November.
