When Justin Lothrop first came across Ursula Wills’ short story “The Wicker Husband” online in 2021, the Votiv Films producer immediately knew that it was material worth championing. The offbeat fantasy fable, which at its core explores themes of jealousy and the transformative power of love, was just the kind of unique IP that the Seattle and L.A.-based banner looks to back.
“It hadn’t been published anywhere,” Lothrop recalls of Wills’ story, which is the source material for Olivia Colman starrer Wicker that releases in the U.S. tomorrow (October 23) via Black Bear. “She was just writing them and putting them up on a website somewhere.”
For Lothrop, who has built much of Votiv’s business around finding distinctive material and championing stories that might otherwise struggle to reach the screen – think Sydney Sweeney boxing title Christy and Rose Byrne comedy-drama Tow –, the premise was an immediate draw. Lothrop quickly optioned the story and sent it to producer Brad Zimmerman of Yoki, Inc., the production company founded with filmmaker David Michôd.
Votiv and Yoki would ultimately enlist Save Yourselves! filmmakers Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson to write and direct the project that would later attach Colman and her South Of The River Pictures banner to embrace a film that is anything but conventional.
Wicker is an audacious comedic fable about sex, marriage and the absurdities of social convention. It tells the wholly original love story of an ostracized fisherwoman, played by Colman, who commissions a husband to be made by the local basketmaker, played by Peter Dinklage. When her wicker husband (Alexander Skarsgård) proves more spectacular than she ever imagined, his soulful spirit and unique prowess awaken something inside of her, setting off a wave of jealousy, fascination and upheaval that threatens the very fabric of village life. Elizabeth Debicki, Marli Sui and Nabhaan Rizwan also star.
Topic Studios and Tango financed the title. Producers are Ed Sinclair, Tom Carver, Lothrop, Zimmerman, Lia Buman, Ryan Heller, Colman, Brent Stiefel, Michôd, Tim Headington, Michael Bloom, Andrea Cornwell and Oliver Kassman.
When Colman was sent the project at script stage to potentially play the main character, the material immediately stood out to her.
“I’m always excited if there’s something I haven’t read before,” she says. “It’s amazing how many similar scripts turn up and this was just a total godsend, a bolt out of the blue. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Creative fit
After optioning Wills’ story, Lothrop and Zimmerman were keen to attach husband and wife writing-directing duo Wilson and Fischer, the filmmakers behind 2020 Sundance sci-fi comedy Save Yourselves!, because they felt “they would really get the material.”
“I always loved the way they approached theme,” says Lothrop. “Save Yourselves! was such a unique movie that had a lot to say about the world and an allegory for climate change and how we are approaching that. So, their ability to bring out themes through these visually unique spaces was interesting in terms of how their brains work.”
He admits that Wills’ short story didn’t have as many patriarchal themes as the feature film does, with the original work focusing more on “jealousy” and “people’s reactions to love that they don’t understand” but Wilson and Fischer really leaned in on the construct of marriage and how to defy gender expectations in the script.
“They are really able to unpick the little intricate complexities of a relationship,” says Zimmerman. “They brought a lot more to the patriarchal approach that they took and to be able to balance that complexity with a more fantastical approach is a really delicate tonal balance. It’s a unique gift to bring the warmth and the humor but not shy away from the more difficult parts of talking about relationships and the challenges that we have as human beings.”
Fischer and Wilson completed the script in two weeks in 2021 while in quarantine, before producers sent it to Colman. The Wicked Little Letters and The Roses actor says she immediately felt drawn to this character whose independence is strengthened, rather than compromised, by love.
“She was on her own, but she had so much power and she was perfectly happy with herself,” Colman says. “Finding the right partner didn’t halve her power, but it enhanced it. There’s something beautiful about the two of them and the bomb that gets set off in the village when they realize that they’ve been doing it wrong. And it’s a lovely look at women and their position and what love should look like.”
She continues: “I think imbalance always interests me and I never want to not mention it. But this is done with such humour and such a light touch and it’s not beating anyone over the head with it, but rather saying that this is probably how it used to be and this is how we don’t want it to be. The central love is of total equality and that is important to me.”
At this point, Colman and her South Of The River Pictures banner, which she founded in 2019 with her husband and screenwriter Ed Sinclair and MD Tom Carver, opted to board the project from a production standpoint as they felt they could add value to the project.
“One thing that was obvious from the start is that it had a very sort of British sensibility,” says Sinclair, the writer and creator of Sky/HBO drama series Landscapers. “Al and El are from American indie comedy and there’s a very thin line between that and British indie TV comedy. They had watched all the shows that we all grew up with, many of which Olivia had been in, so we immediately had a sense that we could be really useful in that respect.”
Sinclair continues: “As a writer, I tend to write stuff that tonally sits at a very specific place that’s comic and dark and Wicker has that brilliantly. I know from experience how brilliant but also how hard it can be to deliver that on screen and the number of wrong turns you can take. So, it felt like we could be a really useful support for them on that front. And, as a company, we want to back brilliant, creative people who are willing to take a risk. There’s something totally thrilling about that because we don’t really see it as a risk, we see it as terrific fun.”
Indeed, having a main love interest made out of wicker is a risky proposition in the current marketplace but Carver says that the originality of the script and tone was always going to be “a blessing or a curse.”
“Fortunately, we found the right partners, and we found the right people who saw it as a blessing and that comes from the fantastic script and Olivia’s attachment,” he says.
Black Bear pre-sold the title at AFM in 2023 and the project shot in Hungary September-November 2024. While in post-production, the team decided to hold back for a Sundance bow, where it premiered earlier this year. Black Bear shortly took U.S. rights after its premiere and the company is also releasing the film in the UK on October 30.
Betting on “future comps”
For Votiv, Wicker is a clear example of the kinds of singular stories that it looks to source and bring to writers and directors. “The way we like to approach things, because we are such a small company, is by trying to do things that feel unique to the marketplace,” he says. “Broadly speaking, it allows us to find a little space for ourselves.
“There are plenty of companies that do great work that are a little more down the middle than what we do and so, as a result, unfortunately because a lot of these stories aren’t being told, what ends up starting to feel unique are stories like Christy and Tow and Wicker and these feel like stories that Hollywood has ignored. We’ve found that there are a lot of stories about strong women that aren’t being told and there’s an opportunity for us to be able to tell some of these stories. I think we’ve just been lucky to get a few of these off of the ground.”
Zimmerman adds: “A film like this was very hard to comp as we were putting it together. It’s very fantastical in tone and specific and is a bold statement. But I want to be making the movies that are the future comps, not the ones that are trying to mimic the past. We want to try and give audiences something new and it’s a really hard thing to do. No one can totally invent the wheel, but we have to try.”