Lenny Abrahamson

Lenny Abrahamson

Focus Features has dated three prestige releases for the latter stages of 2018, led by Lenny Abrahamson’s Room follow-up The Little Stranger.

Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson, Will Poulter, and Charlotte Rampling star in The Little Stranger and the ghost story will open on August 31, 2018, which raises the likelihood of an autumn festival berth.

Lucinda Coxon (The Danish Girl) adapted the screenplay based on the novel by Sarah Waters about a country doctor in 1947 who is summoned to a patient at a haunted house where his mother used to work. Gail Egan, Andrea Calderwood, and Ed Guiney of Element Pictures serve as producers.

Focus will open Joel Edgerton’s drama Boy Erased starring Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, and Edgerton in limited release on September 28, raising the prospect of another festival slot.

Based on Garrard Conley’s novel Boy Erased: A Memoir Of Identity, Faith And Family, the film centres on the son of a Baptist pastor in a small American town who is told he must attend a gay conversion therapy programme or face excommunication from his community. Edgerton produces with Kerry Kohansky-Roberts, and Steve Golin.

Rounding out the trio of announcements is Working Title’s Mary, Queen Of Scots in limited release on November 2, 2018. The Donmar Warehouse artistic director Josie Rourke directs Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie in the historical potboiler from a screenplay by Beau Willimon.

The feature is based on the novel My Heart Is My Own: The Life Of Mary Queen Of Scots by John Guy, which explores the 16th century rivalry between Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I. Producers are Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Debra Hayward.