EXCLUSIVE: Netflix and writer-director Wash Westmoreland have set Jack Huston for their adaptation of the Susanna Jones novel The Earthquake Bird. The Boardwalk Empire alum co-stars alongside previously set Alicia Vikander and Riley Keough as an aspiring British musician who dreams of making it big in Tokyo.
The Earthquake Bird is a Tokyo-set female-driven noir thriller that tells the story of young female expat who is suspected of murder after her friend goes missing in the wake of a tumultuous love triangle with a handsome local photographer. The pic shoots this May in Tokyo and Sado Island.
Scott Free’s Kevin Walsh and Michael Pruss will produce alongside Ann Ruark and Twenty First City’s Georgina Pope. Ridley Scott will be exec producer.
The Earthquake Bird won several awards including the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Crime Writers’ Association New Blood Dagger Award for newly published authors. Westmoreland seems a strong match for the material, having spent a year studying in Japan around the time the book is set there. He previously co-wrote and co-directed the Sundance winner Quinceañera.
Huston just wrapped the Martin Scorsese-directed The Irishman for Netflix. He’s repped by UTA and Untitled.
