Kristen Stewart, Chloe Sevigny to Star in Lizzie Borden Movie
(Photo: Matt Baron/MediaPunch/REX Shutterstock)
Kristen Stewart and Chloe Sevigny are in talks to star in a drama about notorious murderess Lizzie Borden.
Pieter Van Hees (Waste Land) will direct the psychological thriller from a screenplay by Bryan Kass.
Sevigny will play Borden, who was acquitted in 1892 for murdering her father and stepmother with an ax. She was set to take on the same character in an HBO miniseries from Tom Hanks that never came together.
Stewart will assume the role of Bridget Sullivan, the Bordens’ live-in maid who testified at the trial as she was home when the murders were committed.
The still-untitled film explores the true events that led up to the infamous double murder.
Borden’s story has already been adapted for the big and small screen, including Christina Ricci’s 2014 TV movie, Lizzie Borden Took an Ax. It also inspired the children’s rhyme with the same title: “Lizzie Borden took an ax/and gave her mother 40 whacks/when the job was finally done/gave her father 41.”
Naomi Despres is producing the gothic thriller and Playtone is executive producing. The Solution will sell the film at the upcoming American Film Market, while WME is representing the project in the U.S.
Stewart, best known for the Twilight franchise, most recently starred in the drama Still Alice and action comedy American Ultra. Her sci-fi film Equals played at the Venice and Toronto film festivals and recently sold to A24 and DirecTV. She also has the Ang Lee pic Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and a Woody Allen movie on the horizon.
Sevigny currently stars in FX’s American Horror Story: Hotel.
Stewart is repped by Gersh and McKuin Frankel Whitehead, while Sevigny is repped by WME and Brillstein Entertainment.
