Companion star Sophie Thatcher has been confirmed as the leading role in horror filmmaker Jennifer Kent’s junior feature, The Girl Who Was Plugged In, which is expected to be an adaptation of the James Tiptree, Jr. sci-fi book of the same title from 1973.
The premise is set to centre on Thatcher’s dual role of both a mentally unwell P Burke and Delphi, the flawless yet intellectually stunted lab-grown double designed to be a walking billboard for the tech company that created her, which Burke now has to operate as a job.
What could go wrong in a world so image-conscious where a woman’s physical appeal and lack of opinions are steered as social currency?
“I have never felt a more urgent need to make a film as much as I have with The Girl Who Was Plugged In,” the director shared with Deadline, who broke the story first. “Even though the original story was published over 50 years ago, its themes are now landing with a searing relevance, as if it were just written.”
Kent is known and loved by horror fans and feminist film scholars for her 2013 stellar directorial debut, The Babadook, hailed as one of the modern age’s precursors to the Elevated horror style and a devastatingly terrific thesis on grief and fractured motherhood. The film, adapted from the director’s previous short film Monster, took home the AFI or AACTA Awards’ big three: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, becoming the first horror feature from Down Under to do so. Now the filmmaker is eager to get her next project up and going.
Kent’s second film was The Nightingale, released in 2018 and centering itself as an exploration on how women suffer in conflict.
Thatcher is also credited on the hit TV series Yellowjackets and the Scott Beck and Bryan Woods horror Heretic.
Tiptree’s original novella was awarded the Hugo Award in 1974 for its demonstration of feminist themes embedded within a sci-fi network, and initially was adapted for TV in the SCI FI CHANNEL show Welcome to Paradox as the fifth episode.
Discover more from
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
