It would appear that director Terence Davies – who brought us the elegant and superb The Deep Blue Sea last year – isn’t going to have to wait as long between feature films this time. And it also means one of his long-cherished passion projects might finally see the screen, with word that his adaptation of Sunset Song may be coming together at last.
Producer Bob Last, who worked with Davies on The House Of Mirth back in 2000, has announced that the film is now entering the casting stage, with shooting set for either later this year or early 2013 in Scotland and Sweden.
Lewis Grassic Gibbon wrote the novel in 1932, and it focuses on Chris Guthrie, a farmer’s daughter struggling through a tough life filled with pain and family dysfunction. Davies has been trying to get the film version made for more than a decade now, but faced constant obstacles thanks to the book’s tough subject matter. It probably doesn’t help that the story opens with Chris’ mother committing suicide and poisoning two of her other children. Still, that hasn’t stopped the BBC making a TV version back in the early 1970s.
With Hurricane Films putting up some of the money, Davies could see this one on screens before the end of next year.