DEADLINE – EXCLUSIVE: Facebook has given a ten-episode straight-to-series order to a half-hour female-driven dramedy, starring and executive produced by Elizabeth Olsen. The untitled series (fka Widow), which will run on streaming platform Facebook Watch, was created and written by Kit Steinkellner (Z: The Beginning of Everything), with Switched at Birth creator Lizzy Weiss on board as showrunner and James Ponsoldt (Master of None) set to executive produce and direct multiple episodes, including the pilot. The show hails from Big Beach TV and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.
The Kit Steinkellner/Elizabeth Olsen dramedy, which had been in the works for awhile, is among the first high-end series ordered by Facebook as the social media juggernaut is making a push in premium original content. The project, written on spec by playwright Steinkellner, had been originally set up at Showtime. Its premise is not being revealed but Olsen is believed to be playing a young widow dealing with grief while reconnecting with relationships from her past. YouTube Red has a similarly themed half-hour pilot, Widow.
In addition to Olsen, Weiss and Ponsoldt, the series will also be executive produced by Robin Schwartz, Marc Turtletaub and Peter Saraf for Big Beach TV, and Cynthia Pett, Brad Petrigala, and Jon Liebman for Brillstein Entertainment Partners. Big Beach TV, a subsidiary of independent film powerhouse Big Beach, will serve as the studio. Emmy-winning casting director Avy Kaufman (The Night Of, Damages, The Alienist, Life of Pi) is casting the series.
“I couldn’t be prouder of the group we have brought together for this show,” Olsen said. “Kit’s story has been near and dear to me for years and I can’t wait to share our dark, funny, and complicated show with the world. “
Olsen is coming off co-starring turns in Wind River, Ingrid Goes West and Marvel’s Avengers franchise.
Steinkellner’s debut graphic novel Quince was published this fall. She is also adapting the memoir Mad About Men for television with Sundial Pictures.
Weiss was the creator and executive producer of the Peabody-award winning drama Switched at Birth, which ran for five seasons and over 100 episodes on Freeform and received a Peabody award.
Ponsoldt directed and executive produced the pilot for the praised Netflix series Master of None, as well as features like The Spectacular Now and The End of the Tour.
Big Beach TV is currently in production on the Starz series Vida from showrunner Tanya Saracho, whose next project Brujas they are also developing. They have several other shows in development including Gorilla and the Bird with Channing Tatum’s Free Association. On the feature side, Big Beach recently had two world premieres at Sundance 2018: Puzzle, whose worldwide rights sold to to Sony Pictures Classics, and White Fang. TriStar Pictures recently acquired worldwide rights to Big Beach’s You Are My Friend, based on the life of Fred Rogers, to be directed by Marielle Heller and star Tom Hanks as Rogers.
Olsen is repped by Gersh, Brillstein Entertainment Partners, and Sloane Offer. Ponsoldt is repped by UTA, BEP and Frankfurt Kurnit. Steinkellner is repped by ICM Partners, Circle of Confusion and Felker Toczek. Weiss is repped by UTA.
It’s said that you haven’t made it as a star until you have a beauty campaign, which is why it’s such a big deal every time a new A-lister signs on to be the face of a brand.
This is the case with celebrity, Eliizabeth Olsen and Kiehl’s as she has been chosen to be the face of this unique brand.
Every Earth Month, Kiehl’s solicits celebrity fans to redesign product packaging for a good cause.
This year, Elizabeth Olsen and Maggie Q remixed the Creamy Eye Treatment With Avocado jar.
One-hundred percent of the net profits for each limited-edition cream will go to Recycle Across America, an organization that creates easy environmental solutions in the US.
The charitable eye creams are double the size of the classic formula and will sell for $47 this April.
I have added a new HQ movie still from Lizzie’s movie Silent House! Check it out!
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There is no shortage of young women on the big screen these days, with the “Twilight” movies in full flower and Disney Channel “it” girls like Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez solidifying their move into features.
But at least one emerging actress from that demographic says that the abundance of personalities doesn’t mean Hollywood accurately portrays women in their late teens and early 20s.
Elizabeth “Lizzie” Olsen, the star of Sundance hit “Martha Marcy May Marlene” (more on that film, which looks to be a breakout this fall, in the weeks to come), says she feels frustrated by what she sees as Hollywood’s binary depictions of young women.
“A lot of times with female relationships and young women [in the movies], it’s either ‘Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants’ or catty b–,” Olsen, younger sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, said this week over lunch in New York, where she lives and attends college. “I just have a problem with that. They’re supposed to be either as perfect as how they’re portrayed on Disney or as mean as they’re portrayed in high school movies. And in real life it’s neither of those.”
Her own solution, she said, has been to take on a new role, in a movie called “Very Good Girls,” that she believes avoids both cliches. A dramatic comedy from Naomi Foner (mother of Maggie Gyllenhaal and screenwriter of “Running on Empty”), “Girls” will star Olsen and Dakota Fanning as teenagers the summer after they graduate from high school.
“This is a very real story of two best friends, about a real and very raw relationship, and the healthy way that young women interact with each other,” Olsen said. (She dismissed the early log line, which had the two lead characters each seeking to lose her virginity, as being unrepresentative of Foner’s script. “That happens in the movie, and that’s fine for a log line, but that’s not really what it’s about,” Olsen said.)
The Sean Durkin-directed “Martha Marcy,” which follows a young girl in the weeks after she escapes from a cult, opens Oct. 21, and the Fox Searchlight film is likely to garner its young star some Oscar buzz. While the films marks Olsen’s screen debut and is certainly the most anticipated of her upcoming features, it’s hardly the only place she’ll appear: The 22-year-old has already shot four other films, including the dramatic comedy “Peace, Love and Misunderstanding” opposite Jane Fonda and Catherine Keener, and she plays Josh Radnor’s younger friend and love interest in the college-set “Liberal Arts.”
“Good Girls” was scheduled for an early fall shoot, working around Olsen’s class schedule as a senior at New York University, but now may not happen right away, conceded Olsen. In part, she intimated, that’s because of the same frustrations that prompted her to take the role in the first place. “It’s difficult,” Olsen said. “A lot of people don’t want to finance movies like that. Unless, of course, there are vampires or something weird that can animorph.”
How I Met Your Mother’s Josh Radnor will direct and act alongside rising star Elizabeth Olsen in the independent film Liberal Arts, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The movie follows a 35-year-old who still wants to live like a college kid, but must come to terms with his age and budding responsibilities. Olsen plays a 19-year-old student who falls for Radnor’s character and bonds with him over their love of music and literature. Age ultimately comes between them as they yearn to make the relationship work.
Radnor, who recently made his directorial debut on the film HappyThankYouMorePlease, also wrote the script that is scheduled to prep this spring.
Olsen, the younger sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, recently created buzz for Martha Marcy May Marlene, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. The 22-year-old actress currently is filming Red Lights opposite Robert De Niro, Sigourney Weaver and Cillian Murphy.
