Rooney Mara’s The Secret Scripture movie held captive in bankruptcy purgatory

Urrgh! I’ve just seen that The Secret Scripture movie starring all sorts of fantastic people—Rooney Mara, Vanessa Redgrave, Theo James, Eric Bana, Aidan Turner and Jack Reynor—is tied up with Relativity’s complicated bankruptcy case. Which means it’s highly unlikely we’ll see the adaptation of Sebastian Barry’s novel this year at all. The film, along with half a dozen other movies, is in limbo until the completion of the bankruptcy auction/sale process.

I’m so disappointed! I read Barry’s novel last year, and while I shared in my take on the book  that I didn’t exactly love it—I felt my lack of knowledge of Irish history was a real deterrent to full understanding and enjoyment—I was looking forward to seeing the more dramatic elements of the story on film. 

Broken down to its’ simple human elements, it’s the tale of a beautiful young Irish woman, Roseanne (Rooney Mara), the daughter of a rat catcher, who marries a man, is befriended by one of his brothers (Aidan Turner) has an affair with another (Jack Reynor) and then punished for it by a small-minded world and a cruel and unforgiving priest (Theo James) with what amounts to shunning then imprisonment in a psychiatric hospital. The story is told by the woman herself (Vanessa Redgrave) at 100, to Dr. Grene (Eric Bana). The Secret Scripture gets its’ title from Roseanne’s testimony and the diary she keeps hidden under the floorboards in the institution.

Image by Sabina O’Brian

Epic, right? Plus being that I’m a sucker for period films—
especially period films set in England and Ireland—and was excited to see this cast working together and to see how director Jim Sheridan untangled the story cinematically, so this is a real downer for me.  

Have you read The Secret Scripture? Are you hoping, as I am, that a financial angel steps in to buy the company and set things right?