Pugh will reportedly play a sex companion robot who murders her billionaire owner.
Film history is littered with killer robots, from Blade Runner’s replicants to Frank Oz’s sexy robot killers in The Stepford Wives. Now Apple Studios has picked up the rights to Dolly, a new feature film about a female sex robot who—you guessed it—murders her billionaire owner. It’s not so straightforward though: she says she didn’t do it, and hires a lawyer to make her case in court.
Deadline describes the film as “a psychological thriller for the Time’s Up era.” It will focus on a 1950s “housewife who uncovers a disturbing truth about her seemingly perfect life.”
The film will be based on a 2011 short story of the same name by American author Elizabeth Bear. The book, which the Los Angeles Review of Books described as “not a bad story,” follows a police investigation into the murder of a billionaire that may or may not have been committed by a robot.
Details on the film’s plot are yet to be revealed, but we do know that “the setting [for Dolly] is an isolated, utopian community in the 1950s California desert,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. The film is not yet attached to a director.
The script, however, will be written by Hotel Artemis’s Drew Pearce and Oscar-nominated Vanessa Taylor, who co-executive produced on Games of Thrones and co-wrote the screenplay for Guillermo del Toro’s romantic fantasy drama The Shape of Water in 2017.
The crew was originally supposed to start filming Dolly in spring 2021 but, after production hold-ups, it has been postponed (cheers, coronavirus).
Pugh just wrapped up her role starring in 1950s-set thriller Don’t Worry Darling (Olivia Wilde’s feature-length follow-up to 2019’s Booksmart), in which she plays one half of married couple Alice and Jack. You can expect to see her in Marvel’s Black Widow, opposite Scarlett Johansson and Rachel Weisz, in May.
Words by Camilla Patini
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