Cate Blanchett Set For Alice Birch’s Feature Directorial Debut ‘Sweetsick’ At Searchlight

Two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett (Tár, Nightmare Alley) will star in Alice Birch‘s Sweetsick, which will rep the filmmaker’s feature directorial debut at Searchlight.

Sweetsick, which Birch also wrote, follows a mercurial woman (Blanchett) with a strange and piercing gift – the ability to see what others most intimately need, often at great personal cost – who sets out on a journey home. Cameras rolls this fall in the UK and Greece.

Pic is produced by Tessa Ross, Juliette Howell and Theo Barrowclough from House Productions (Conclave, Mint, The Wonder) alongside Blanchett and her Dirty Films banner. Lee Groombridge will also produce. Film4 will executive produce and co-finance.

Birch said, “I could not be more excited to be making my debut feature as a director with such an extraordinary team of filmmakers and collaborators. I am in the safest hands with Tessa Ross and her brilliant team at House, and am so proud to be working with Searchlight and Film4. To have the peerless Cate Blanchett at the centre of it is thrilling.”

“We’re all very big believers in Alice Birch and it’s been wonderful to see that the fantastic team she’s gathered around her, not least the amazing Cate, feel the same way – all drawn in by her bold, beautiful vision,” added Ross.

Blanchett won a Best Actress Oscar for Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine and a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator. Other features credits include Searchlight’s Nightmare Alley, as well as The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Cinderella, Thor: Ragnarok, Ocean’s 8, and Don’t Look Up. 

Birch broke out with the highly acclaimed Lady Macbeth, for which she was BAFTA-nominated. She then earned a WGA award for her work on Succession and later received high praise for her work on the TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People, for which she was Emmy-nominated. Birch wrote a second Sally Rooney TV adaption, Conversations with Friends, before becoming the writer and showrunner behind the series reimagining of Dead Ringers. On the film front, additional screenplay credits include The Wonder, which garnered her another BAFTA nomination, Mothering Sunday, and The End We Start From. 

Blanchett is represented by CAA and Birch by UTA, Davis Law Group, and Giles Smart at United Agents.

VP of Development & Production Pete Spencer and Creative Executive Cameron Chidsey are overseeing the project for Searchlight Pictures, reporting into Production & Development Heads Katie Goodson-Thomas and DanTram Nguyen. Farhana Bhula, Director of Film4 and Alice Whittemore, Development & Production Executive are overseeing the project for Film4. Farhana Bhula is an Executive Producer for Film4, and Zoe Edwards, Harry Dixon and James Green are Executive Producers for House Productions.