Saoirse Ronan To Play HANNA, Teenage Assassin

Looks like Hollywood's pattern of releasing two films at about the same time with similar content continues. Don't look at me like that - you know the pattern I'm talking about. A Bug's Life/Antz, The Illusionist/The Prestige, Armageddon/Deep Impact, and the list goes on.

Hot on the heels of the heralded Hit Girl in Kick-Ass, Focus Features is getting in on the teenage assassin game with director Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice, The Soloist) and The Lovely Bones star Saoirse Ronan as the lead in a film called Hanna. Described as a cross between La Femme Nikita and the Bourne movies, the story for this one sounds pretty interesting for having such a young lead actress. I'll let The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision Blog hit you with the plot summary:

The story follows a 14-year-old Eastern European girl (Ronan) who has been raised by her father to be a cold-blooded killing machine. She connects with a French family, forms a friendship with their daughter and goes through the pangs of adolescence. When the girl is dragged back to her father's world and discovers that she was bred as a killing machine in a CIA prison camp, she must fight her way to a free life.

This summary seems a little vague to me. The dad raises his daughter to be a killer, but she fights her way to a free life after realizing it? Perhaps she just isn't a fan of the CIA.

In retrospect, I'm glad I don't know every little detail about this project, as it actually sounds fairly interesting. Perhaps one of the most interesting elements (as The Playlist points out) is that the film reunites Ronan with her Atonement director Joe Wright in a genre that neither has dabbled in before. I'm all for changes of pace for directors and actors establishing range, so regardless of whether this film is "good" or not, I'm happy everyone (including Focus Features) seems to be willing to take a chance. Word is that hotshot directors Alfonso Cuaron and Danny Boyle were circling this project a little while back (it was #75 on the 2009 Black List), so it's surprising to see Wright given the opportunity over such big time players.