Last week, we heard that Geraldine Viswanathan (Miracle Workers) was set to join Emilia Jones (Locke & Key) and Nicholas Braun (Red State) in the psychological thriller Cat Person, which is being directed by Susanna Fogel (The Flight Attendant). Now Deadline reports that seven more actors have signed on to be in the film. They are Hope Davis (Wayward Pines), Michael Gandolfini (The Many Saints of Newark), Liza Koshy (Boo! A Madea Halloween), Fred Melamed (A Serious Man), Isaac Powell (American Horror Story), Isabella Rossellini (Blue Velvet), and Donald Elise Watkins (Black Box). So Fogel has assembled quite a solid cast for this movie.
Cat Person is based on a short story by Kristen Roupenian that was published in The New Yorker back in 2017 (you can read it HERE). Roupenian’s story followed
the brief relationship between Margot, a twenty-year-old sophomore college student, and Robert, an older man who is a regular at the movie theater where Margot works.
Michelle Ashford (Masters of Sex) has written the screenplay adaptation and expansion. Cat Person is being produced by Jeremy Steckler and Helen Estabrook of New Yorker Studios. Fogel, Ashford, Daniel Hank, and Gino Falsetto serve as executive producers. The project is being fully financed by Studiocanal, and the company is also handling worldwide sales.
No details were revealed about the characters Davis, Gandolfini, Koshy, Melamed, Powell, Rossellini, and Watkins will be playing. We know Jones and Braun are playing Margot and Robert, while Viswanathan’s character is a college student who is Margot’s best friend.
I wouldn’t have called Roupenian’s story a thriller, so Fogel and Ashford must be building something even darker, presumably something in the vein of Fatal Attraction, on the foundation of the short story. Cat Person started filming yesterday, October 14th, and we’ll keep you updated on the project as it continues to move forward.