“Mary Shelley” to Premiere at Toronto International Film Festival
Mary Shelley, the movie, (formerly Storm in the Stars) has been announced as the Saturday Night Gala Premiere film for the Toronto International Film Festival, held from September 7 to 17, 2017. Toronto is one of the most commercial festivals on the International circuit, launching films like the Academy Award winning “Room” and horror film “Cabin Fever”.
The film directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour and starring Elle Fanning as Mary Shelley was filmed on location in Dublin and County Wicklow, Ireland and Luxembourg, was shot in Ireland with funds from the Irish Film Board by Parallel Film, the same company behind Soairse Ronan’s’ “Brooklyn”.
Mary Shelley tells the story of teenage Mary dreaming of writing but yet finding inspiration when she meets Percy and is struck by love, but Percy is married with a child (actually it was two). Mary soon becomes pregnant with Percy’s child, a daughter who tragically dies. They are outcast by polite society and grieving for their child, they depart from London and Percy introduces Mary to Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati in Lake Geneva and the a stormy night ghost contest story gives birth to the Frankenstein Creature story. Mary struggles to find a publisher and must fight for her monster and her identity.
The film also stars Douglas Booth as Percy, Maisie Williams as Mary Scottish girlhood friend Isabel Baxter, Bel Powley as Claire, Joanne Froggatt and Stephen Dillane as the parents, and Tom Sturridge as the mad, bad Lord Byron. The original script is by Emma Jenson with Alan Maloney and Ruth Coad producing for Parallel Films with Amy Baer of Gidden Media who originated the project.
The story covers some of the same ground as “The Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley: The Romantics” but skips lightly over the 1814 elopement trip and jumps to 1816 to 1818.