Jenna Ortega Circling Taika Waititi’s ‘Klara and the Sun’
Taika Waititi’s Klara and the Sun adaptation is getting some real movement, with Wednesday star Jenna Ortega in talks to play the titular role, according to TheInSneider.com.
The project has been in the works for a while. Deadline reported last year that it was in development with Waititi directing and Dahvi Waller writing — it’s unknown if Waititi did an additional pass and/or if he will receive any writing credit for it. It’s based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s bestselling novel, and the story follows Klara, a “solar-powered robot girl created to prevent sick children from becoming lonely.”
Here is the synopsis for the book from Goodreads:
“From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?”
It’s going to be a big year for Jenna Ortega, who will next be seen in Jade Halley Bartlett’s Miller’s Girl. She also has multiple films in post-production, including Trey Edward Shults’ untitled film co-led by The Weeknd, with Barry Keoghan also starring; Alex Scharfman’s Death of a Unicorn, which also stars Richard E. Grant, Paul Rudd, and Will Poulter; Tiffany Paulsen’s Winter Spring Summer Fall; and Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice 2, which will be a real test to her star power.
Ortega is also supposed to film the second season of Wednesday in the spring, which might mean that either they will be rushing Klara and the Sun to start filming ASAP, or it will have to wait until the end of the year to shoot.
Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins was released in US theaters over the fall and is slowly expanding globally. He has attached himself to multiple projects, including a live-action Akira, an adaptation of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Incal, and a Star Wars movie for Lucasfilm. However, in an interview with Business Insider a month ago he revealed Klara and the Sun would be his next movie.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
