Abbie Cornish is David Riker’s ‘The Girl’

It appears that Abbie Cornish is grown up enough to take on mother roles. When David Riker’s The Girl was being pre-sold in Cannes this May, producers were attaching Emily Blunt in the white-trashy type of role. Cross off Blunt and add Cornish say the Screen Daily folk. To be directed by David Riker (scribe for 2008’s Sleep Dealer) and based on his 2009 Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Award winning screenplay, Cornish would play a young Texan mother who loses her child to foster care and begins smuggling Mexicans across the border. When her quick money scheme fails, she ends up travelling across Mexico with an orphaned eight year old girl from Oaxaca for company.

Cornish who has Sucker Punch, The Dark Fields and W.E all in post production, is free as a bird right now and is apparently circling the Alien reboot/prequel. I’m not sure what shooting dates Paul S. Mezey’s Journeyman Pictures (recent cred is Cold Souls) and Douglas Cummins who’re producing the project have in mind, but look for this to start lensing sometime soon.