‘Eden’ By Ron Howard.
Eden is an upcoming survival thriller from Oscar winning filmmaker Ron Howard (“Frost/Nixon”, “Apollo 13”, ‘A Beautiful Mind”). It stars Oscar nominee Vanessa Kirby (Napoleon) and Jude Law (The Talented Mr. Ripley) as the main leads. Alicia Vikander and Daisy Edgar-Jones were previously cast in the film but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts, Edgar-Jones was filming “Twisters” at that time. The film was also titled “Origin Of Species” before retitling it to “Eden”. Noah Pink (Tetris) will write the script.
Based on two different accounts of the same true story, the film is being described as “a darkly comic tale of murder and survival, set around a group of eclectic characters who abandon civilization for the Galapagos. They are all searching for the answer to that ever-pressing question that plagues us all: what is the meaning of life?”
The “Eden” cast is pure eye candy. In 2023, new actors including Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria), Ana De Armas (Blonde), Daniel Bruhl, Felix Kammerer (All Quiet On The Western Front), Richard Roxburgh, Toby Wallace, Ignacio Gasparini and Paul Gleeson joined the cast alongside previously reported Vanessa Kirby and Jude Law.
It was announced in October 2022, that Ron Howard would direct the film, and he had begun the casting process and location scouting, with Alicia Vikander and Daisy Edgar-Jones among those in negotiations. the film was titled “Origin Of Species” at that time. Casting was permitted to continue during the SAG-AFTRA strike after securing an interim agreement with the guild. In November, The film was retitled to “Eden”, with Vanessa Kirby and Sydney Sweeney added to the cast to replace Vikander and Edgar-Jones respectively.
Filming was expected to begin in November 2023, with production taking place in Queensland, Australia (where he also filmed his last film “Thirteen Lives”), and a small unit filming on the Galapagos Islands. Filming began on November 27, on the Australian Gold Coast.
Also joining the hot project is composing maestro Hans Zimmer, marking the tenth collaboration between the two Oscar winners, which began in ‘91 with “Backdraft”.
Howard wanted to tell this story for 15 years, ever since he first visited the Galapagos Island where the real-life events took place. just before the pandemic he teamed up with writer Noah Pink to tell the story.
Ron Howard is coming off the Amazon Prime Thai cave rescue thriller “Thirteen Lives”. that one garnered strong reviews and personally one of my favorite films of that year, but it was released in August— it could have been prime Oscar movie had Amazon just waited to release it in the fall.
Mathias Herndl is the cinematographer, his first feature film since 2015.
Eden is slated to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, 2024.
