Elisabeth Moss joins new film from Burial Rites author Hannah Kent

Right: Elisabeth Moss in *The Invisible Man* (Photo: Universal)
Left: Hannah Kent (Photo: Lauren Bamford)

The Handmaid’s Tale and Mad Men star Elisabeth Moss will head to South Australia to star in Run Rabbit Run, a new film penned by celebrated local author Hannah Kent.

15 June 2020 by Walter Marsh

After two novels, including her award-winning 2013 debut Burial Rites, Kent will make the leap to the screen with Run Rabbit Run, an original story developed with Snowtown producers Anna McLeish and Sarah Shaw and their company Carver Films.

Run Rabbit Run will see Moss portray a fertility doctor whose clinical understanding of life and death is shaken by the increasingly strange behaviour of her daughter, and a “ghost from her past” – classic thriller tropes all, and an interesting follow-up to Moss’s recent turn in The Invisible Man. Moss and her partner Lindsay McManus will produce the picture, which will be partially shot in South Australia under veteran Australian television director Daina Reid, who has previously worked with Moss on several episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale.

“I am hugely grateful to Anna McLeish and Sarah Shaw of Carver Films for giving me the opportunity to write and develop an original screenplay,” Kent said of the news. “To now have that script in the hands of the extraordinarily talented Daina Reid and Elisabeth Moss is a thrill indeed.”

Jonathan van der Knaap
*Run Rabbit Run* is the first screenplay from the author of *Burial Rites* and *The Good People*

“We are thrilled to be supporting this film, which marks the screenwriting debut of talented South Australian novelist Hannah Kent,” South Australian Film Corporation CEO Kate Croser said. “It is fantastic to be able to put South Australian storytellers in the global spotlight, and led by this critically acclaimed team of female key creatives, Run Rabbit Run is set to be a world-class production.”

While Run Rabbit Run is Kent’s first screenplay, it isn’t her first brush with the film industry; Burial Rites has been the subject of film industry chatter since publication. Back in 2017 it was announced that Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino was attached to the project with Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence set to star as Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last woman to be publicly executed in Iceland.

While there has been no further word as Guadagnino works on a Coen Brothers-penned Scarface remake and Lawrence juggles numerous other projects, let it be known that we are still very keen to see that film.