John C Reilly to join that Kevin discussion

This spring, Lynne Ramsay is returning to feature film direction eight years after Morvern Callar. And it’s another adaptation that’s tempted her back. This time, the source novel is Lionel Shriver’s We Need To Talk About Kevin. And like Alan Warner’s novel before, Ramsay adapted it for the screen herself. We’ve got the latest casting, plot and production news below.

The novel is about a school massacre, told from the perspective of the killer’s mother in a series of letters to her apparently estranged husband. Tilda Swinton is to play Eva Khatchadourian, the mother/protagonist, and it’s just been announced the comic actor John C Reilly is in talk to play her husband, Franklin. There’s no word yet on who’ll take the lynchpin role, sociopathic kid Kevin.

Still from Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar, starring Samantha Morton.

The adaptation has had a long genesis. In 2005, BBC Films acquired the rights and Lynne Ramsay (just fired from The Lovely Bones – now that could have been an interesting take on the novel) signed up to direct. She and Robert Festinger, writer of Tom Wilkinson/Sissy Spacek drama In The Bedroom, were initially to pen the screenplay together but it appears that this version of the script was abandoned or rewritten. BBC Films renewed its adaptation rights in 2007 and later in the year Ramsay submitted a second draft the script to producers. In 2008, Jennifer Fox (Michael Clayton) joined the producing team and last year Tilda Swinton’s name was attached to the project.

Distribution rights to the film have already been sold and the film is set to start shooting later this year.

Still from Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher.

So what can we expect to see when this film comes to the big screen? First off, author Lionel Shriver has reportedly expressed concern that the film won’t be able to accommodate the novel’s angle – the story is recounted by an unreliable narrator. Eva Khatchadourian is a travel writer who’s away from home a lot. She vacillates between believing that there has always been some key empathetic element missing in her son Kevin’s personality to blaming herself for his crimes. She also withholds the extent of his actions until the novel’s end. But Ramsay has no problem with ambiguity and her elliptical approach to screenwriting (she’s not a big fan of explanatory dialogue or back stories or really any explanation of motives or practicalities at all) and directing (lots of choppy edits) could work well with the source material here. What we could miss, however, are the novel’s moments of black comedy. Ramsay’s preference for intensity over humour means these elements are likely to be pared down or delivered even more ambivalently. And how will John C Reilly (of pratfall/Will Ferrell sidekick fame) gel with a straight man role? We have no idea but we’re willing to keep an open mind.