Dakota Fanning has landed the lead role in Effie, an original script from Emma Thompson. Deadline also reveal that Tom Sturridge and Thompson's husband Greg Wise will co-star, along with Julie Walters, Derek Jacobi and Edward Fox. Richard Laxton (An Englishman in New York) is directing the period drama, based on the marriage between Euphemia Gray and famous critic John Ruskin in the 1850s.
War of the Worlds and Twilight star Fanning, 17, will play Effie, whose marriage to Ruskin (Wise) was never consumated due his irrational disgust of her body. Suffering in a loveless marriage, the actually beautiful Effie finds passion with Ruskin's protégé, the painter John Everett Millais (Sturridge).
Thompson herself plays Lady Eastlake, who takes Effie under her wing, while Fox is in talks to play Sir Charles Eastlake. Walters and Jacobi has signed up for Ruskin's brow-beating parents.
Carey Mulligan and Saoirse Ronan were previously courted for the title role, with the long-planned production delayed by a copyright infringement court case by Gregory Murphy, whose play The Countess also focused on the Ruskins.
The privately funded film will shooting in London, Scotland and Venice this October. Don Rosenfeld said: "It’s Emma Thompson’s first original script after doing several fine adaptations, and it gets to the heart of Victorian England. The script for Effie was always brilliant, but sometimes these things take time."
Thompson won the Oscar for her 1995 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, and went on to script her Nanny McPhee films. She'll next be seen as Oh in Men In Black III.
Former child star Fanning has the final Twilight films Breaking Dawn - Parts 1 & 2 coming up, as well as The Motel Life opposite Emile Hirsch. The Boat That Rocked star Sturridge has been busy with On the Road and Junkhearts.