Scorsese Taps Mads Mikkelsen for What Happens at Night
Mads Mikkelsen boards Martin Scorsese's What Happens at Night, joining Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence in a stacked cast.
Martin Scorsese is quietly assembling a chilly little nightmare, and the cast just got even cooler. Per The InSneider, Mads Mikkelsen is set to join Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence in Scorsese's next film, an adaptation of Peter Cameron's novel What Happens at Night. Apple is footing the bill. I know, that lineup reads like a fever dream in the best way.
The setup
What Happens at Night follows an American couple who trek to a small, snowbound European town to adopt a baby. They check into a vast, mostly empty hotel and start crossing paths with a gallery of oddballs: a flashy cabaret singer, a sleazy businessman, and a charismatic faith healer. Reality keeps wobbling. The deeper the couple wades into claiming the child, the less sure they are about who they are or what their marriage is built on. So, yeah, expect a dreamlike, unnerving vibe rather than a straightforward adoption drama.
Who is playing who?
No word yet on Mikkelsen's role, but he is one of those actors who instantly makes any movie feel a little more dangerous. DiCaprio and Lawrence are already aboard, and Patrick Marber (of Notes on a Scandal) wrote the script. Apple Original Films is financing and producing, with cameras aiming to roll in February.
That Vertigo tease
A few months back, DiCaprio mentioned he was working on a film that uses Hitchcock's Vertigo as a touchstone. He never named the project, but all signs point to this one. His description of a recent chat with Scorsese is too specific not to clock:
'Had a conversation with Marty about it. Any time you get to sit and talk with him about movies, it's a religious experience. But when he talks about a movie he's still trying to figure out, it's like, 'Each decade that movie means something different to me. Is she a ghost, or is she not a ghost? Is she there? Is he a ghost? What is it?' So I rewatched it, and I knew the exact moments in the redwoods that he was talking about. I was like that's the moment that Marty felt that. So yeah, there's something we're working on that has been a reference to that.'
What we know right now
- Title: What Happens at Night, based on Peter Cameron's novel
- Director: Martin Scorsese
- Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Mads Mikkelsen (role TBA)
- Writer: Patrick Marber (Notes on a Scandal)
- Backer/Producer: Apple Original Films
- Tone/plot: eerie, dreamlike adoption story set in a snowy European town; encounters with a cabaret singer, a corrupt businessman, and a faith healer inside a giant, near-empty hotel
- Schedule: production is targeting a February start
- Scoop origin: The InSneider
Meanwhile, on Scorsese's very full desk
Scorsese has a bunch of other irons in the fire, though some seem to be cooling. There is (or was) a Hawaiian-set crime drama that had DiCaprio, Emily Blunt, and Dwayne Johnson attached. He has also circled a Frank Sinatra biopic that was eyeing DiCaprio and Lawrence, plus The Life of Jesus based on Shusaku Endo's 1973 novel. Those last two appear to be on the back burner. And The Devil in the White City keeps drifting in and out of his orbit with DiCaprio attached to star, but that one has been wandering the development maze for ages.
Bottom line: Scorsese, DiCaprio, Lawrence, and now Mikkelsen doing a snowbound psychological mystery for Apple? That is a very tasty combo. If the February start sticks, expect this one to heat up fast.