Husband and wife filmmaking duo spark major buzz with new comedy movie

The new film Wicker is drawing wide attention for its funny and unusual take on romance and marriage. The creators behind the project are married co-writers and co-directors Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer. Their real-life partnership helps explain why the movie explores relationship dynamics with such sharp insight. Set in a vaguely medieval England, the feminist fable follows a woman who builds an ideal husband out of a basket.

Making Movies Together

The pair first crossed paths in New York in late 2015 and quickly decided to collaborate on creative projects. They share a four-year-old child and have now completed two feature films together. When creating scripts, they do not split characters by gender roles. Instead, each writer takes whichever part inspires them on a given day. Fischer wrote the dialogue for the Baker Man, while Wilson focused deeply on the bitter character of the Tailor's Wife played by Elizabeth Debicki.

Source Material And Success

The project is based on a fourteen-page short story titled The Wicker Husband by author Ursula Wills. Because the original text had very little dialogue, the filmmaking duo expanded the village setting and built detailed backgrounds for every couple in the story. They previously released a 2020 comedy titled Save Yourselves! about a couple missing an alien invasion during a retreat. For their latest movie, the creators always wanted Oscar winner Olivia Colman to play the lead role of the Fisherwoman, despite initial doubts from others in the industry.

Context

Independent filmmakers often spend years trying to secure major star talent and festival slots for their second feature films. The Melbourne International Film Festival served as the opening venue for this movie before online memes and discussion broadened its public appeal. Bringing a short literary work to the big screen requires writers to invent substantial new dialogue and secondary characters to fill a standard feature film runtime.