Friday, January 25, 2019

Director Babak Anvari talks about "Wounds" and Dakota


[...]

And Dakota Johnson? Another A-list bit of casting…

After we cast Armie, that’s when the conversations happened with the others. I met Dakota in London. She’s a lovely human being. She was done with the 50 Shades franchise and was looking for other projects.

And she wasn’t turned off by the darkness?

I think she was pretty excited by it. She’d just done Suspiria when I met her so was on a roll. And then Zazie Beetz who was a massive fan of, because I was writing the script as I was watching Atlanta. And Lucan and I were like Zazie Beetz would be amazing. She was the one I kept saying I’d love to have here in the film. And we were so lucky.


With it being only a novella, and a very dark one at that, how faithful is Wounds and how much did you have to add to make a feature?

It’s quite a faithful adaptation, but it’s a really short book. So I had to change certain things, add certain stuff. But overall the foundation of it is the same, and I was constantly in touch with Nathan the writer. He read every draft and was super excited and super helpful. It was a joy writing it. And we got his full blessing. He was saying that he always heard stories when an author sells the rights to his books and the nightmare of it changing into something else, but that he had none of that on this one!