Now that Ellen Page is wrapping up her contributions to Woody Allen’s latest, The Bop Decameron, she’s free to start lining up future projects, and Variety reports that she might be leaning toward The East, a thriller penned by Sound of My Voice collaborators Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij.
As we reported earlier, Marling would star as a woman hired by a private contracting firm to infiltrate The East, a group the trade is describing as “a mysterious anarchist organization.” True Blood star Alexander Skarsgard would play the East’s leader, while Page would be Izzy, his former lover who starts to grow jealous at the attention paid to new “recruit,” Marling. Like Crazy star Felicity Jones originally was set to play Izzy, but her press commitments to that film prevented her from sticking with the project.
Yes, if you saw the Sundance hit Sound, you’ll notice loose comparisons between the stories. And Fox Searchlight is on the hook to distribute both Sound and East, so they are in the Marling-Batmanglij business. Page is also a Searchlight darling, having starred in the studio’s Oscar smash Juno, as well as Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, Whip It!
It’s odd to consider 24-year-old Page the “veteran” who brings a bankable name to a project. But given her involvement in Christopher Nolan’s Inception and Juno, she’s certainly a marketable star and her name could lure ticket buyers. Marling, meanwhile, will appear next in Nicholas Jarecki’s Arbitage opposite Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon, then completes filming on Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep with Shia LaBeouf, Stanley Tucci and Nick Nolte.
