For Toronto’s Babe Nation Films, bringing their latest feature to the screen was a combination of great timing and a compelling script.

Alice, Darling stars Anna Kendrick as a woman whose vacation with her two best friends – played by Nigerian-born BAFTA winner Wunmi Mosaku and Mohawk actor Kaniehtiio Horn – forces her to come to terms with the emotional abuse of her boyfriend.

The film is the second collaboration between Babe Nation producers Lindsay Tapscott and Katie Bird Nolan, and screenwriter Alanna Francis. It also marks the feature directorial debut of U.K. director Mary Nighy.

Elevation Pictures handles Canadian distribution for the film, which was released theatrically and on VOD in Canada on Feb. 3, while Lionsgate holds international distribution rights. Elevation’s Noah Segal and Christina Piovesan also served as producers on the film.

Attracting high-level partners was a mixture of the right timing, the right script, and a solid casting director.

Francis tells Playback Daily that she, Nolan and Tapscott were eager to do a follow-up collaboration from their first film, 2019’s The Rest of Us, directed by Aisling Chin-Yee and starring Heather Graham. She quickly went to work on what would become the Alice, Darling screenplay, which she delivered to Nolan and Tapscott at the end of 2018.

The script went into development in early 2019, which lasted roughly a year, according to Nolan. She says Babe Nation had been introduced to director Nighy a few years before by Piovesan, and knew the project would be a good fit. Nighy officially came on board in early 2020, before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic slowed momentum.

Nolan says they decided to take the time to “hunker down” to find their lead, bringing U.K. casting director Alice Searby to lead the search.

“[Searby] comes to the table with her own very creative take on a cast and is able to present ideas that we as a filmmaking team had never thought of,” says Nolan, who adds that Searby pitched Kendrick early on in the casting process.

“Being the magician that she is, [Searby] happened to know that Anna was looking for this kind of [project],” says Nolan. “We shared it with Anna on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. Her main agent at CAA called me on a Thursday saying that the whole team absolutely loved it… Anna read the script on a Friday, she met Mary on a Sunday, and then I think by Tuesday she was attached. It was the craziest timeline. It’s never happened that fast.”

At that time Elevation Pictures was already attached as a partner and Canadian distributor. Lionsgate had read the script and expressed interest, but was waiting on news of who would be cast as the lead. Once Kendrick was confirmed, they quickly came on board. Support from Ontario Creates and Urban Post rounded out the financing less than six months after Kendrick was cast.

Production began in Toronto and Ontario’s Kawartha Lakes region in May 2021 with a budget of more than $4 million.

Kendrick has also been frank in publicity appearances for the film about her personal experience with emotional abuse. “She was fairly open right away about her reasons for wanting to do it,” says Tapscott, adding that Francis’ “quiet and nuanced” approach to emotional abuse was a compelling draw for the film, as well as the emphasis on female friendships.

“She was really generous with sharing her experiences and emotional response to the material,” says Francis, noting that Kendrick, who is also an executive producer on the film, became involved in the last six months of development to help “craft the character and her internal journey.”

With Alice, Darling released in the Canadian and U.S. market, the producers have now turned their attention to their next project: a film adaptation of Françoise Sagan’s French novel Bonjour Tristesse, which is expected to go into production later this year with Montreal writer Durga Chew-Bose in her directorial debut.

Nolan says Babe Nation has been in development on the film for roughly seven years, after managing to acquire the rights to the novel. Further details on the project will be released later this year.

Photo courtesy of Elevation Pictures