Isabelle Huppert & Finn Wittrock Set For Home Invasion Thriller ‘Free Radicals’; Charades To Launch Sales At Cannes

EXCLUSIVE: Isabelle Huppert (Elle) and Finn Wittrock (Luckiest Girl Alive) have closed deals to star in Free Radicals, an English-language home invasion thriller based on the same-name short story originally published in The New Yorker by Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro.

With psychological twists and a Hitchockian flair, Free Radicals revolves around the harrowing encounter between an ailing woman (Huppert) and a young killer on the run (Wittrock). Xia Magnus (Sanzaru) is set to direct from his script written with Alyssa Polk. Pic’s producers are Academy Award nominee Alexandra Milchan (Tár) and Theo Vieljeux (Monica). 

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Charades will handle international sales for the film, following its success with a number of other titles from emerging filmmakers, including Carlo Mirabella-Davis’ Swallow starring Haley Bennett; Zachary Wigon’s Sanctuary with Christopher Abbott and Margaret Qualley, which Neon will release in the U.S on May 19; Charlotte Regan’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Scrapper; and Charlotte Wells’ Oscar-nominated A24/Mubi drama Aftersun. The company is co-repping domestic with CAA Media Finance.

Said Charades’ Yohann Comte, “This poisonous ballet was an obvious fit for Charades: a young talented director like Xia Magnus, a fascinating complex woman played by the great Isabelle Huppert, surrounded by producer Alexandra Milchan and Theo Vieljeux. This is exactly the kind of project we were looking for after films like Sanctuary.”

Boasting two wins at France’s César Awards and the most nominations of any actress in history at 16, Huppert landed both an Oscar nom and a Golden Globe in 2017 for her turn in Paul Verhoeven’s psychological thriller Elle, which world premiered at Cannes. The celebrated French actress most recently starred in Caravaggio’s Shadow, Polish Oscar entry EO, the Focus Features pic Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris and the French-language thriller La Syndicaliste, which is coming up on its U.S. release.

A 2x Emmy nominee for Ryan Murphy’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story and American Horror Story, who has also been seen on Murphy’s series Ratched, Wittrock’s film credits include Luckiest Girl Alive, Judy, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, If Beale Street Could Talk, La La Land and The Big Short. Other upcoming projects for the actor include Ava DuVernay’s Netflix pic Caste, and Hamish Linklater and Lily Rabe’s Downtown Owl.

Magnus made his feature directorial debut with the atmospheric horror film Sanzaru, which made its world premiere at Slamdance 2020 and its international premiere at the Fantasia Film Festival. The film was selected to participate in the IFP Completion Lab, the U.S. in Progress at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival, and the Torino Film Lab Extended program.

In addition to producing writer-director Todd Field’s acclaimed Focus Features drama Tár starring Cate Blanchett, which this year claimed six Academy Award nominations, Milchan recently exec produced Apple TV+’s celebrated crime drama Black Bird, starring Taron Egerton and Paul Walter Hauser. Other upcoming projects for her include the anticipated thriller series The Crowded Room, starring Tom Holland and Amanda Seyfried, which debuts on Apple TV+ on June 9th, and David Fincher’s Netflix crime pic The Killer starring Michael Fassbender, which premieres on the platform November 10th.

The owner of Dissident, a boutique literary management and production company based in Los Angeles, Vieljeux’s producing credits include Siblings, which was produced in association with Charles Gillibert, as well as Andrea Pallaoro’s Monica, starring Academy Award nominee Patricia Clarkson and Trace Lysette, which world premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival and was acquired by IFC.

The first Canadian and 13th woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, Munro’s fiction, which is often set in her native Huron County in southwestern Ontario, has appeared in such journals as The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The New Yorker and The Paris Review. She is also the 2009 Man Booker International Prize winner for her lifetime body of work. 

Huppert is repped by UBBA and CAA; Wittrock by CAA and Weissenbach Management; Magnus by Dissident and Gang, Tyre, Ramer; Milchan by Paul Hastings; and Munro by WME.

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