Margot Robbie has signed on to star and produce a new crime thriller titled Dreamland. Since rising to international fame in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, the actress has put herself on a creative path that could be described as unusual for a young, budding superstar. Rather than following up her success by taking on a standard slate of cheesy rom-coms, second-fiddle parts in male-dominated action movies and straight-forward Oscar bait projects, Robbie has actively searched out challenging roles that go against typical Hollywood sex symbol stereotypes. Even when Robbie takes on what looks like a standard eye-candy role in a film like The Legend of Tarzan, she makes sure the character is strong and she has something to work with.
Adventurous Robbie's biggest impact came in 2016's Suicide Squad, an atypical superhero movie that cast her not as a girlfriend or a wife but a genuine fully-fledged action heroine (the very arc of the character was all about Harley Quinn breaking free of a stereotypical comic book female role and asserting her own bizarre identity as an equal to her male counterparts). For her next project, Robbie will continue breaking barriers by taking on the type of role one would normally see going to a male actor.
According to Deadline, Robbie's new upcoming project is a bank robbery thriller called Dreamland, which the actress will produce and star in. The story follows a female bank robber (Robbie) during the Depression who is pursued by a 15-year-old kid seeking to collect the bounty on her head in order to save his family's farm. Mile-Joris Peyrafitte will direct from a screenplay written by Nicolaas Zwart. Brad Feinstein of Romulus Entertainment is handling the film's financing with Robbie partnering with producers Tom Ackerley and Josey McNamara of Lucky Chap Entertainment and Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Rian Cahill of Automatik.
Robbie's writer-director team on Dreamland is relatively inexperienced, with director Peryafitte having only the teenage mystery As You Are to his credit feature-film wise and Zwart only an episode of the teen-centered Riverdale plus a short film. Given the film's 15-year-old central character, a kid gone bounty hunter who somehow manages to find Robbie's character ahead of the FBI, Peryafitte and Zwart's experience handling teenage characters could come in handy. Robbie's bank robber character sounds at least on the surface like a role you'd normally see going to a Tom Hardy or a Ben Affleck, which is probably what attracted her to it in the first place.
For Robbie, taking on the role of a Depression-era bank robber represents what is becoming for her a fairly typical move: going against the grain of what Hollywood might expect from her. In addition to Dreamland, Robbie also has in the offing a highly-anticipated turn as infamous Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding in I, Tonya, a role that has required her to completely change her appearance. Speaking of infamous characters, Robbie is also set to reprise her iconic Harley Quinn role in Gotham City Sirens, a female comic book character team-up movie she is executive producing. Busy Robbie will also play an assassin on a sinister mission in Terminal; and she will tackle the (perhaps more conventional) role of Daphne Milne in Goodbye Christoper Robin alongside Domhnall Gleeson.
It's perhaps no surprise to see Robbie also signing on for the film Marian to play Maid Marian, a role that always goes to an attractive female star, but this time around Marian will be the lead character and therefore more than just Robin Hood's love interest. If that movie doesn't get Robbie an Oscar nomination, perhaps her turn as Queen Elizabeth I alongside Saorise Ronan's title character in Mary Queen of Scots will do the trick (playing QE1 worked for Cate Blanchett). Occasionally it's all right to put on a period costume and just go for a statue.
Dreamland does not have a release date as of this writing. We'll keep you updated on the latest information.
Source: Deadline