Filming wrapped on an under-the-radar screen adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Long Day’s Journey Into Nightstarring Jessica Lange, Ed HarrisBen Foster and Colin Morgan.
Acclaimed British theater and opera director Jonathan Kent made his feature directorial debut with the project, which was filmed in Ireland. Above is a first image from the production.
The play sees two-time Oscar and five-time Golden Globe winner Lang reprise her 2016 Tony-winning Broadway role, also directed by Kent. She plays the troubled, emotionally fragile and addiction-plagued Mary Tyrone. Four-time Oscar nominee Ed Harris is her husband James, a famous actor but failed property tycoon – and a man with fears and regrets rooted deep in his poor beginnings.
Foster will play their awkward, charming and headstrong older son, Jamie. And Colin Morgan (Belfast) is the grimly optimistic and consumptive younger son, Edmund – a portrait of O’Neill himself. David Lindsay-Abaire (Poltergeist) adapted the game for screen.
Set on a day in August 1912 at the family’s Connecticut seaside home, the story follows the Tyrone family as they deal with the looming twin specters of Edmund’s potentially fatal consumption diagnosis along with his mother Mary’s increasingly fragile and troubled state. The family knows the condition threatens to throw her back into the severe morphine addiction she has only recently overcome.
The film was shot in County Wicklow, Ireland and is financed by Magnoliamae Films, BKStudios, Brouhaha Entertainment and Fetisoff Illusion. Produced by Gabrielle Tana (Philomena), Bill Kenwright (Cheri) and Gleb Fetisov (Without love).
As first reported by the Irish Times, filming was briefly halted after a few days when a financier unexpectedly pulled out of the project, but those issues were resolved soon after when BKStudios stepped in.
Executive producers are BKStudios CEO David Gilbery (The lost daughter), and executive producer is Naomi George (My pure Earth). The film is a co-production with Redmond Morris and his Irish production company Four Provinces Films.
Director of photography was Mark Wolf with production design by Anna Rackard and costume design by Joan Bergin and Jane Greenwood.
Eugene O’Neill’s classic play has been adapted many times for the big and small screen, including versions by Sidney Lumet and Jonathan Miller.
Lange is repped by CAA and Untitled Entertainment. Ed Harris of CAA and Ziffren Brittenham LLP; Ben Foster from United Talent Agency? Colin Morgan from United Agents.
