Cate Blanchett is set to star in the next film from Pedro Almodóvar, which will be the Spanish auteur’s English-language feature debut.
The film, which is in early development, will be called “A Manual for Cleaning Women,” and the project is an adaptation of the 2015 collection of short stories by Lucia Berlin. Berlin’s book is a witty and melancholic group of 43 stories about women working in laborious jobs across the country, including at laundromats, halfway houses and on switchboards.
“A Manual for Cleaning Women” would incredibly be Almodóvar’s first feature in English, though he quite recently made a short film, “The Human Voice,” that starred Tilda Swinton and was released by Sony Pictures Classics.
Blanchett will also produce “A Manual for Cleaning Women” through her Dirty Films banner, as will New Republic Pictures along with El Deseo. Producing for Dirty Films are Andrew Upton and Coco Francini alongside Blanchett. Brian Oliver and Bradley Fischer will produce for New Republic, and Almodóvar will also produce.
Blanchett is a two-time Oscar winner and most recently starred in both “Nightmare Alley” from Guillermo del Toro, and Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up,” both of which are in the Oscar race. She’ll next be seen in “TÁR” from director Todd Field and the adaptation of the video game “Borderlands,” as well as in another Guillermo del Toro project, an adaptation of “Pinocchio.”
Almodóvar’s most recently directed “Parallel Mothers” starring Penélope Cruz, which is being released by Sony Pictures Classics.
Blanchett and Almodóvar are both represented by CAA.
Variety first reported the news.
