Joe Wright & Saoirse Ronan Create HANNA

Joe Wright and Saoirse Ronan’s previous collaboration on ATONEMENT resulted in an Oscar(tm) nomination for Ronan. Their latest project, HANNA, casts Ronan as a 16-year-old trained to be the perfect assassin, in a tale that combines elements of fairy tales and sharp social commentary on what our culture does and doesn’t expect from the female of the species. When I spoke with them on April 8, 2011, the conversation covered the empowering quality of the fierce physcial training Ronan undertook, why the villain of the piece has red hair, and the possibility of a sequel with Wright directing the film from a story Ronan herself devises.

Hanna is a kick-ass film that returns fairy tales to their proper, cautionary roots. Ronan plays the title character, a 16-year-old raised in the forest by her woodsman father, played by Eric Bana, who has trained her since toddler-hood to be a perfect assassin. It’s not an idle pastime. There’s Marissa, an evil, yet honey-voiced CIA agent, played by Cate Blanchett, who has been waiting for many years for the chance to get her hands on Hanna. When the time comes for Hanna to finally confront Marissa, the epic game of cat-and-mouse plays across the Eastern Hemisphere. Wright directed from a script by Seth Lochead and David Farr. Ronan and Wright previously collaborated on the perfectly exquisite ATONEMENT, which resulted in an Oscar nomination for Ronan.