Abbie’s Road Includes ‘Dark Fields’ and Madonna’s ‘W.E.’

It’s a shame that Bright Star and Abbie Cornish’s Frances ‘Fanny’ Brawne didn’t fair too well upon its theatrical release – the buzz from Cannes sort of dissipated, coming to a screeching halt in the busy Fall movie-going season. This certainly didn’t detract casting agents from casting the Australian actress for a pair of films: Madonna’s W.E. and The Dark Fields.

Variety reports that she would topline the Madonna pic and the Neil Burger project. In W.E. she’d be taking over the role of a contemporary woman named Wally Winthrop, who has romantic problems of her own – in addition to the fact that she’s obsessed with the Duchess of Windsor’s life.

In Dark Fields, which should b the first of the two projects to lense, this is based on Alan Glynn’s novel and scripted by Leslie Dixon, procuring an amazing new designer drug that gives one awesome mental capabilities, a writer (Chris Cooper) takes it regularly and begins to become rich and powerful. Only then he discovers the drug’s dangerous side effects and the fact that, if he ever stops taking it, he’ll die. Meanwhile, he must elude other takers of the drug who are desperate for his stash.