Julian Fellowes’ Scripted ‘The Girl on the Landing’ Slate for 2011 Production

There’ll soon be a casting call for young Brit and Aussie actors and actresses looking to board a psychological thriller/love story signed by an Oscar-winning scribe. Robert Jones’ Jonescompany Productions will produce the Julian Fellowes adaptation of Paul Torday’s The Girl on the Landing, and the pair are now on the look out for a director who can work in duel genres. Production would be set for Spring of next year.

Set in Scotland and London, this tells the tale about a young couple whose dull marriage is transformed when the husband is visited by strange hallucinations. Here’s the book synopsis: Michael is dressing for dinner at a friend’s country house in Ireland. As he descends the staircase, he spots a small painting of a landing with an old linen press and the white marble statue of an angel. In the background is a woman clad in a dark green dress. During dinner, Michael comments on the painting to his hosts but they say there is no woman in the picture. When Michael goes up to bed later, he sees that they are correct. This is only the first in a series of incidents that lead Michael to question his grip on reality. His wife Elilzabeth is unsettled by the changes she sees in a man she originally married because he was dependable and steady, not because she loved him. She realizes she has never really known Michael and as he changes, she sees glimpses of someone she could fall in love with. Michael, in the meantime, is disturbed by events at his family’s ancestral home in the wilds of Scotland and by a past that is threatening to destroy everything, and everyone, he has ever loved.