Jenna Ortega is reportedly close to signing up to play the lead in Taika Waititi’s Klara And The Sun – an artificial being created as a friend for young people.
Taika Waititi has a whole raft of projects that may or may not get made, including a Star Wars film, the Tower Of Terror project based on the Disney theme park ride, adaptations of Flash Gordon and Akira, not to mention his planned take on The Incal, an adaptation of a ‘partly satirical space opera literary masterpiece’. There are other film projects in the pipeline too, not to mention TV-based ones.
Time will tell which of these reach fruition, but we do know that the filmmaker is plumping for Klara And The Sun as his next project. Back in October, we heard that Waititi wanted to begin production in Australia at the beginning of this year. We haven’t heard much since then, but given that a star doesn’t seem to be locked down yet, that timeline may be a wee bit delayed.
It seems like we may be close to confirmation of the film’s key piece of casting, though: according to Hollywood scooper Jeff Sneider, Wednesday's Jenna Ortega is ‘is close to being cast as the lead in Klara.’ If the film follows the same path as Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Klara is the central character, a solar-powered artificial being who is created as a playmate for young children.
We could definitely see Ortega working in this role. Her popular turn in Wednesday, the Netflix show, highlights her talent for bringing a markedly different energy to her performances. Playing a synthetic being surrounded by a world of humans could yet be inspired casting should it prove to be true.
Ortega could fit well in the film’s title role, then, but it’s Waititi who has us wondering about whether he can fit the story’s tone. The sweet and sad mood of Ishiguro’s novel will make for a kind of filmmaking experience that we haven’t seen Waititi handle before.
Still, it looks like things are moving with Klara, so we’ll bring you more news as production nears, including other casting reports.
