SA book Burial Rites to be Hollywood movie directed by Luca Guadagnino and starring Jennifer Lawrence

HOLLYWOOD’s Luca Guadagnino is to direct a film starring actor Jennifer Lawrence based on Adelaide author Hannah Kent’s 2013 debut novel, Burial Rites.

Actress Jennifer Lawrence will star in the film. Picture: AFP PHOTO / VALERIE MACON

HOLLYWOOD‘s Luca Guadagnino is to direct a film starring actor Jennifer Lawrence based on Adelaide author Hannah Kent’s 2013 debut novel, Burial Rites.

Guadagnino is currently drumming up Oscar buzz for the Call Me by Your Name, Variety online reports.

A very exciting announcement about the film adaptation of #BurialRites https://t.co/ojQVHYRiS8

— Hannah Kent (@HannahFKent) December 12, 2017

Variety says the film will centre on Agnes Magnusdottir (Lawrence), the last woman to be publicly executed in Iceland in 1830.

Oscar winner Lawrence was confirmed for the film adaptation of Kent’s hugely successful debut novel in October 2013, six months after it was published.

The drama is rife with Academy Award potential, with Lawrence scoring her first Academy Award nomination at the age of 20 for starring in a similarly harsh film, Winter’s Bone.

Burial Rites has changed Kent’s life.

It had been a decade in gestation, finally emerging after an intense five months’ writing to an urgent deadline for her creative writing PhD thesis at Flinders University.

She had no inkling then that the manuscript would go on to become the subject of an international auction for the publishing rights that would net her an Australian record $1 million-plus advance.

Asked by The Advertiser in 2013 if she realised that she had created such a gem, she replied, “Not ever.”

“Margaret Atwood has this lovely phrase. When you’re the writer of the book you’re never going to be charmed by it because you know how the rabbits are smuggled into the hat. You can’t ever sit back and objectively evaluate it,” she told The Advertiser.

“I know when I can be content with something … but I’d never think ‘Oh God this is amazing, everyone must read it’.”