All Cooped Up: Haley Bennett Reteams with Producer Mollye Asher on Jackie Polzin’s “Brood”

Some folks get into getting a dog bricklaying practice the idea of family before making kids and painting fences. But what if chickens became part of the equation? Deadline reported that actress Haley Bennett is reteaming with her Cyrano director Joe Wright and Swallow‘s producer Mollye Asher on the book to film adaptation of Jackie Polzin’s Brood. All three will produce with Bennett also eyeing to star in the project.

Asher, who began with low budget indie items such as 2014’s She’s Lost Control and Fort Tilden, really climbed up the indie producing ladder when she teamed with Chloé Zhao on her first three indie features including the Oscar-winning Nomadland. Brood is being set up at Topic Studios (Spencer) and will be executive produced by Maria Zuckerman, Ryan Heller and Michael Bloom.

Gist: This follows a woman as she heroically tries to keep her brood of four chickens alive against a fierce Minnesota environment from a brutal winter to a sweltering summer that brings a surprise tornado. She battles predators, bad luck and the uncertainty of a future that might not look anything like the one she always imagined. As the year unfolds, we come to know the small band of loved ones who comprise her circumscribed life at this moment: Her mother, a flinty former home-economics teacher who might have to take over the chickens; her best friend, a real estate agent with a burgeoning family of her own; and her husband, whose own coping mechanisms for dealing with the miscarriage that haunts his wife are more than a little unfathomable to her.

Worth noting: Brood is Jackie Polzin’s debut novel.

Do We Care?: We’re getting a whiff of community impeding over the private lives of others a la American Beauty, Little Children or Bad Education, we’re looking forward in seeing if Haley Bennett does indeed grab the lead role and who’ll be selected for directors’ chair.