Julia Louis-Dreyfus is to star in her first UK film, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal, playing a single mother fighting for the life of her daughter with Death, who has taken the form of a parrot.
The Seinfeld and Veep actor stars in Tuesday, a dark comedy about mortality and compassion currently wrapping in London. The feature debut of UK-based Croatian writer-director Daina Oniunas-Pusic, it is being produced by A24 (Ramy, Uncut Gems), BBC Film and the BFI.
Dying teenager Tuesday had hoped to use her remaining life repairing her relationship with her mother, Zora. But when Death, a size-shifting macaw who's been alive since the dawn of time comes to collect her, they form an unexpected bond.
Using her wit, Tuesday persuades her unlikely new friend to grant her more time so that she can say goodbye to her mother. But as the world slowly crumbles in Death's absence, mother and daughter must find a way to prevent the apocalypse.
Further cast details have yet to emerge, after the film's producers - Helen Gladders, Ivana Mackinnon (Slumdog Millionaire) and Oliver Roskill (Run, An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn) - launched a UK-wide search for an actor to play Tuesday in 2019.
"At it's core, Tuesday is a story about a teenage girl and her single parent mother" Oniunas-Pusic said at the time.
When Tuesday and Death meet, "she really feels like she needs to delay her passing and the way that she does that is she tells him a joke which makes Death laugh ... Tuesday is a complicated character. She's kind, good-natured and has a great sense of humour. But she's also quite cunning and stubborn and a massive risk-taker."
Mackinnon added: "I was drawn to this story because it is like nothing I've ever read in my life ... It's a very, very special film which is ultimately about the power of compassion and love to save the world."
