EXCLUSIVE: Oscar winner Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) has cast Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl) to lead her second feature film.

Fennell won a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award for 2020’s Promising Young Woman, her debut feature as writer and director. She also was nominated for Best Director and Best Picture.

Little is known about the new movie, but sources tell Deadline that Saltburn is the title and that it’s about a grand, aristocratic English family. That’s a world Fennell is familiar with through her own family and school connections. Having portrayed Camilla Parker Bowles in The Crown is bound to have come in handy, too.

Filming is due to start later this year.

Meanwhile, Fennell has joined the cast of Barbie, which has been shooting in the U.K.

Director of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Doomed West End Musical ‘Cinderella’ Is “Angered” Over Treatment Of Cast and Crew On Show

Fennell also wrote the book for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cinderella. The London production recently posted a notice to close next month at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in Covent Garden. Lloyd Webber has said that Cinderella will open on Broadway early next year. To get it ready for New York will require the show to be extensively revamped. It remains to be seen whether Fennell will be available to participate in any rewriting of the Cinderella script.

EXCLUSIVE: Academy Award-winning writer and director Emerald Fennell has lined up the cast for her next film, Saltburn, with Jacob Elordi (Euphoria) and Barry Keoghan (The Batman) attached to star in the project from MRC Film. Deadline recently broke that Rosamund Pike also will co-star with principal photography set to begin this summer in the UK. The pic will be produced by Fennell and LuckyChap Entertainment’s Josey McNamara, Tom Ackerley and Margot Robbie.

Described as a story of obsession, other plot details are being kept under wraps. MRC will take the package to the Cannes market next week, and it is expected to be one of the hotter properties on the market. The film is Fennell’s follow-up to Promising Young Woman, which was nominated for several Oscars and won Best Original Screenplay for Fennell.

“Saltburn,” Emerald Fennell’s hotly anticipated sophomore feature after the Oscar and BAFTA-winning “Promising Young Woman,” will open the 67th BFI London Film Festival.

The film is produced by Fennell and Margot Robbie, whose “Barbie” has grossed more than $1 billion, as well as Josey McNamara (“Promising Young Woman,” “Barbie”).

“Saltburn” reunites Fennell with her “Promising Young Woman” star Carey Mulligan and the cast also includes Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Alison Oliver and Archie Madekwe.

Set in the mid-2000s and shot across the U.K., the film, written by Fennell, follows student Oliver Quick (Keoghan) who is struggling to find his place at Oxford University and finds himself drawn into the world of the charming and aristocratic Felix Catton (Elordi), who invites him to Saltburn, his eccentric family’s sprawling estate, for an unforgettable summer.

The film will have its international premiere on Oct. 4 at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in London. There will also be simultaneous preview screenings of the film at multiple cinemas across the U.K. It is expected to have its world premiere at a fall festival in North America.

Amazon Studios and MGM will release the MRC and LuckyChap Entertainment-produced film in cinemas on Nov. 24.

Fennell said: “I’m honored that our film is able to open this year’s BFI London Film Festival. It is a festival that inspired me so much growing up, one that I followed excitedly from my bedroom on the other side of London. It feels extra-special that ‘Saltburn,’ this very British tale of excess, is able to make its international debut at the wonderful BFI.”

The 67th edition of the festival is Kristy Matheson’s first in her role as BFI festivals director.

Matheson said: “As soon as the credits rolled on ‘Saltburn’ it was clear we’d met our opening night film. Academy Award winner Emerald Fennell returns with an expertly crafted and exhilarating thrill ride of a film that showcases an enormous depth of U.K. talents in front of and behind the camera. With its exceptional performances, delicious plot twists and a soundtrack of early 21st century pop bangers; this hugely ambitious film immediately stole our hearts and we can’t wait to share it with audiences in London and across the U.K. this October.” 

Welcome to Saltburn. Written & directed by Academy Award Winner Emerald Fennell and in select theaters November 24, 2023.

Academy Award winning filmmaker Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) brings us a wicked tale of privilege and desire. Struggling to find his place at Oxford University, student Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) finds himself drawn into the world of the charming and aristocratic Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), who invites him to Saltburn, his eccentric family’s sprawling estate, for a summer never to be forgotten.

The characters are also hemmed in by the film’s unique 1.33:1 aspect ratio, which was the standard for television before the advent of wide-screen TV. Fennell and Oscar-winning cinematographer Linus Sandgren visited the estate and took photos in a lot of different aspect ratios, but kept returning to the near-square 1.33. “It gives you the impression of peeping in, and that’s kind of what this is. It’s a doll’s house and we’re all kind of peeping in, scrabbling to get in,” she says.