Naomi Watts, Richard E. Grant and Harriet Walter have signed to star in Anthony Fabian’s romantic drama Margot & Rudi, about 1960s ballet legends, Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev.
UK sales agent WestEnd Films is launching the UK-produced project at Cannes.
Margot & Rudi reunites Fabian, the director of Mrs Harris Goes To Paris, with that film’s screenwriter, Olivia Hetreed.
The 1960s-set film tells the true story of 42-year-old Fonteyn, a British ballet superstar, who senses her career is over and the 23-year-old Rudolf, a rebellious Soviet defector. Their bond is complicated by her marriage and his affair with another dancer. The stage is the one place they can truly be together.
Watts, who studied dance before becoming an actor, will star as Margot. Alexandr Trush, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian ballet star and principal dancer with the Hamburg Ballet, will portray Rudolf.
The film is set to shoot in October, with Mike Goodridge producing for Good Chaos, Fabian for Elysian Films, Olivia Hetreed for Sympathetic Ink and Chris Coen. Filming locations have yet to be confirmed.
“Growing up in Mexico City, watching Margot and Rudi’s performances in the cinema sparked my passion for stories that blend music, theatre, and dance,” said Fabian. “The film explores the private joy and pain behind their public personas, capturing their unique chemistry.
“Ballet sequences from the duo’s most iconic roles and performances together drive the story, using movement and cinematic fantasy to reveal the truth behind a couple as famous in their day as The Beatles. Their love, defying barriers of culture, age, class, and sexuality, is romantic, unconventional, and thrilling—a love story like no other.”
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