Italian director Paolo Sorrentino is reteaming with Neapolitan actor Toni Servillo, star of Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning The Great Beauty, for his next feature, titled La Grazia.
Details of the new film are being kept under wraps, but it is said to be a love story. Sorrentino, who also wrote the script, is set to begin shooting next Spring. Annamaria Morelli, head of Fremantle-owned The Apartment will proceed together with Sorrentino’s shingle Numero 10, in association with PiperFilm, which will release the movie in Italy.
PiperFilm has had huge local success with Sorrentino’s latest, Parthenope, a sumptuous love letter to his native Naples. The feature has grossed more than $8 million at the local box office, making it the most successful Italian film of the year and surpassing the Italian take for Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty. A24 picked up Parthenope for the U.S. ahead of its Cannes festival premiere and will bow the film stateside on Feb. 7.
Servillo is Sorrentino’s go-to actor. The 65-year-old performer has appeared in 10 Sorrentino-directed features, playing everything from a pop singer cut down by a sex scandal in One Man Up, to the notorious Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi in Loro. Three of Servillo’s Italian David di Donatello best actor honors — Italy’s Oscar equivalent — have been for Sorrentino films, for playing a junkie mob accountant in The Consequences of Love, the sharp-tongued writer and socialite Jep Gambardella in The Great Beauty, and for his turn as controversial Italian politician Giulio Andreotti in Il Divo.
Variety was the first to break the news about Sorrentino’s new film.