Jane Eyre fans, rejoice!
As the dust slowly settles following the release of Emerald Fennell’s seismic, deliciously divisive Wuthering Heights, Hollywood, it seems, is eager to make the most of our collective renewed interest in those brilliant Brontë sisters—and Aimee Lou Wood, of Sex Education and The White Lotus fame, who will soon also play Pattie Boyd (the model who will go on to marry Joseph Quinn’s George Harrison) in the upcoming four-part Beatles biopics, is getting in on the fun. Per Deadline, the Emmy, SAG and Golden Globe nominee will be starring in a new TV adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
She will play the formidable heroine—the orphan who overcomes immense adversity and, as a governess, catches the eye of her brooding employer, Mr. Rochester—with Succession writer Miriam Battye penning the adaptation. It should also be in safe hands given the retelling is being produced by Working Title, the British production company which brought us Joe Wright’s 2005 Pride Prejudice and Autumn de Wilde’s 2020 Emma, and is about to treat us to a fresh reimagining of Sense Sensibility, with Daisy Edgar-Jones at the helm, come fall.
Advance discussions are reportedly underway with a British broadcaster which should be joining the project, and speculation is already brewing as to who might play the elusive Mr Rochester. (Past big- and small-screen iterations have been embodied by the likes of Michael Fassbender, Ciarán Hinds, Timothy Dalton, William Hurt, and Orson Welles.)
It’s unclear when it might hit screens, though 2027 will mark the 180th anniversary of Jane Eyre’s first publication, so sometime next year seems a safe bet. If that feels unbearably far away, take solace in the fact that you’ll have a string of other ravishing period dramas to obsess over before then: the aforementioned Sense Sensibility, of course, but also Netflix’s Pride Prejudice with Emma Corrin and Jack Lowden, and the BBC’s The Other Bennett Sister, with Bridgerton’s Ella Bruccoleri, Richard E. Grant, and Indira Varma. Bonnets at the ready.
