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Sarah Polley–directed Alias Grace set to film in Toronto

Sarah-Polley-Directing

Sarah Polley

Actor and director Sarah Polley will begin shooting her long-planned adaption of Margaret Atwood’s 1996 novel, Alias Grace, in Toronto this August.

Polley originally announced the project as a big-screen motion picture in 2012, but in 2014 plans were revised to produced a six-hour television miniseries. Shooting will begin at Revival Studios on Aug. 15 and continue for three months. Casting details have not been announced.

This will not be Polley’s first CanLit adaptation – she received an Oscar nomination for her adapted screenplay of Alice Munro’s The Bear Came Over the Mountain, released in theatres in 2006 as Away From Her.

Atwood’s historical-fiction novel is based on the real-life 1843 Upper Canada murders of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery. The book won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Atwood wrote an earlier version of the story for CBC Television in 1974.