Hours before her new movie “Carnage Park” debuts at Sundance, Ashley Bell has joined the cast of the coming-of-age nun drama “Novitiate,” TheWrap has learned.
Melissa Leo, Dianna Agron and Margaret Qualley (“The Leftovers”) star in the film, which serves as the feature directorial debut of Maggie Betts. She wrote the script with the aim of exploring the ways in which women love.
Set in the early 1960s, the film stars Qualley as Sister Cathleen, who starts to question her Catholic faith as she trains to become a nun. Leo will portray the Reverend Mother and Agron will play another young nun in the convent. Bell will play Sister Margaret.
The rest of the cast includes Julianne Nicholson, Stacy Martin, Rebecca Dayan, Morgan Saylor, Maddie Hasson and Chris Zylka, whose character will appear in flashbacks.
Jen Gatien (“For Ellen”) is producing “Novitiate” under her DeerJen banner, and production starts this month in Nashville.
Bell, who led the hit horror movie “The Last Exorcism,” stars in Mickey Keating’s thriller “Carnage Park,” which debuts Tuesday night at Sundance.
As a director and producer, Bell partnered with Change For Balance Productions and recently wrapped principal photography in Thailand and Cambodia on “Love & Bananas,” a documentary depicting the daring 48-hour rescue and release of a 70-year-old blind Asian elephant from captivity.
Bell is represented by the Gersh Agency, Primary Wave Entertainment and attorney Rick Genow.