Cate Blanchett attends the premiere of the movie 'Blue Jasmine' during the 39th Deauville American film festival on Aug. 31, 2013, in Deauville, France.
Late last night, Deadline announced that actress Cate Blanchett—who won raves earlier this summer for her role in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine—has decided to take on her first feature-film directing project. Blanchett will helm an adaptation of the novel, The Dinner, by Herman Koch, adapted by screenwriter Oren Moverman.
The Dinner was published in 2009 in Dutch; an English edition came out earlier this year. The psychological thriller sounds like a darker take on the structure of Gods of Carnage: two brothers and their wives have a fancy dinner together, but it turns out that their sons are linked by a crime, the details of which only become clear as the meal progresses.
(MORE: Richard Corliss reviews Blue Jasmine)
Though it will be her first time directing a feature, Blanchett has stage directing experience, and spent years as co-artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company. That said, the decision to get into a directing project may have been a recent one for her. The subject came up in the course of an interview about working with Woody Allen but the actress said she wasn’t looking to get behind the camera soon:
Do you have any interest in directing movies?
If the right project came along, absolutely. I’ve directed things in the theater but it’s very much based on the material. I’m not out there looking. I’m very happy working as an actor.
But never say never?
It seems like hubris when you’ve worked with Woody Allen and Terrence Malick and with Anderson and Scorsese, to say that.