Claire Denis is shifting ahead with cannibal crime drama “The Soap Maker,” which the French auteur is now set to put in writing and direct.
The undertaking, which was first shopped around in 2025 at Berlin’s EFM, has now gained traction with producers Sacha Ben Harroche (“Butterfly Jam”) and Ivy Freeman-Attwood (“The Dispute”) boarding the movie in Cannes alongside lead producer Gerry Go through his New York-based Chrome Leisure shingle. CAA is packaging.
“The Soap Maker” is an English-language movie impressed by the true story of Italy’s Leonarda Cianciulli, who within the late Nineteen Thirties and early ’40s murdered three native ladies within the central Italian city of Correggio and disposed of their our bodies with chemical substances — utilizing what was left to make soaps, candles, cookies and desserts that she shared with individuals in her group.
Italian director Mauro Bolognini drew from the story to make his 1977 cult film “Gran Bollito,” which starred Shelley Winters because the serial killer.
The Claire Denis undertaking, nevertheless, is an unique work, neither a remake nor an adaptation of that movie.
Denis — whose huge physique of acclaimed work includes “Beau Travail” (1999), “Trouble Every Day” (2001), “35 Rhums” (2009), Berlin Silver Bear winner “Both Sides of the Blade” (2022) and Cannes Grand Prix winner “Stars at Noon” — extra just lately shot “The Fence,” with Matt Dillon, Mia McKenna-Bruce and Isaach De Bankolé, which marked her return to colonial French Africa, the place she was raised.
She is presently modifying a movie that’s a part of the Prada-commissioned Miu Miu Ladies’s Tales brief movie sequence that will probably be unveiled in the course of the upcoming Venice Movie Pageant within the Venice Days part.
Denis was feted in Cannes this 12 months with the honorary Golden Carriage (Carrosse d’Or) award bestowed by Administrators’ Fortnight.
The plan is for “The Soap Maker” to be Denis’ subsequent characteristic.
