Elle Fanning to play Mary Shelley for Wadjda director Haifaa al-Mansour

Pioneering Saudi film-maker has cast the young Maleficent actor as the Frankenstein author in A Storm in the Stars



Xan Brooks' review of Wadjda

Video interview with Elle Fanning and Alice Englert for Ginger & Rosa

Elle Fanning will play Mary Shelley in the story of the budding author's romance with poet Percy, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Haifaa al-Mansour, the pioneering Saudi Arabian female film-maker whose debut feature film Wadjda was a festival smash two years ago, is on board to direct the period romantic drama, titled A Storm in the Stars.

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (the daughter of feminist pioneer Mary Wollstonecraft and philosopher/novelist William Godwin), as she was known prior to marrying Shelley, was just 17 when she met her future husband and embarked on a controversial affair with the poet. Percy was married, and remained so for two years until 1816, when his wife Harriet committed suicide.

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