Jennifer Garner will star opposite Bryan Cranston in the upcoming drama Wakefield. Garner will play Cranston’s wife.
The story involves “a man’s nervous breakdown” which “causes him to leave his wife and live in his attic for several months.”
The movie is based on a short story of the same name by E. L. Doctorow, which in turn is a retelling of an 1837 short story by Scarlet Letter author Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Robin Swicord is both penning the script and directing. Swicord wrote the screenplays for The Jane Austen Book Club, Memoirs of a Geisha, Practical Magic, and Matilda.
Jennifer Garner flashes the biggest smile during a sweet stroll with Ben Affleck's mom: https://t.co/yUJKyIo0zP pic.twitter.com/2ddQk3DLQL
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Here’s a longer synopsis from Variety:
[Cranston] will play a married Manhattan lawyer who sees a raccoon in the attic of his home and winds up staying in the attic for several months due to a nervous breakdown. He also said his character will become romantically involved with a younger woman at some point in the story.
Cranston’s character will depart his family after being left stranded and recalling a fight he had with his wife the previous night. When he arrives at home, he decides not to enter his house but instead climbs the stairs of his carriage house-turned-garage up to the attic space — and lives there for the next nine months, emerging only at night and rummaging through trash cans for food while watching his family adjust to life without him much faster than he expects.
Garner was recently seen in the trailer for the upcoming drama Miracles from Heaven.