Between The Summer I Turned Pretty, Materialists, and recent hits like Past Lives and Challengers, the 2020s are really shaping up to rival the Twilight era‘s obsession with love triangles. But while most of these entanglements arose over the course of decades, Nia DaCosta’s Hedda has a new approach: what if all the action went down over the course of one extremely dramatic night?
For her latest film, DaCosta found inspiration in a source a bit older than the MCU. Hedda is a “provocative, modern reimagining” of Henrik Ibsen’s classic 1891 play Hedda Gabler, per its logline. In the film, Tessa Thompson—who previously collaborated with DaCosta on films like Little Woodsand The Marvels—stars as Hedda, a woman “torn between the lingering ache of a past love and the quiet suffocation of her present life.” Hedda seems to have everything she ever wanted, at least according to her husband, George (Tom Bateman), who warns her that “nothing can go wrong” at the Gatsby-esque party he’s throwing. It does go wrong (or right, depending on who you ask) when Hedda’s old flame, Eileen (Nina Hoss), shows up to chaotically “make sure I didn’t love you.” You can probably guess where she lands on that one.
As with any good movie party, this particular “spiral of manipulation, passion, and betrayal” ends with a broken (and very expensive-looking) chandelier, fire, tears, and gunshots. The kids from The Summer I Turned Pretty have a lot of mess to sort out, but at least their love triangle (presumably) won’t end like that.
Hedda is set to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this September. It will also screen in select theaters October 22 before premiering on Prime Video October 29.
