Nia DaCosta to follow The Marvels with a Hedda Gabler adaptation

Nia DaCosta is set to get her Ibsen on—as we all must, someday—with Variety reporting that the Candyman director has just added an adaptation of Ibsen’s classic play Hedda Gabler to her directing roster.

For those of you who aren’t Hedda Heads, the plot of the play is fairly minimal: The title character is married unhappily to a dull but virtuous academic, and entertains herself by manipulating the people around her—most notably a former lover who’s also positioned as a rival to her husband’s very mild ambitions. First staged in 1891, it’s long been heralded as one of Ibsen’s best works, with multiple adaptations for stage and screen alike over the last century-plus of its existence.

DaCosta, meanwhile, has had a busy few years; although her updated version of Candyman wasn’t a unanimous hit with critics, it did fairly well for itself at the box office, bringing in more than $70 million off of a $25 million budget. (Which might help explain why MGM is interested in helping her expand her wheelhouse into the world of Norwegian drama.) She’s also gearing up to be a part of the Marvel machine, with her upcoming film The Marvels (starring Brie Larson, Iman Vellani, and Candyman’s Teyonah Parris) currently set for a July 2023 release date.

And then: The Ibsen! There’s no word yet on who DaCosta might be casting in Hedda Gabler’s title role, generally considered to be one of the plum-est parts in all of drama. (Up to and including an Oscar nomination for Glenda Jackson for 1975's Hedda, which somehow appears to be the only time the play has ever been theatrically filmed in English.) In addition to directing the film, DaCosta will also be writing the script, as she did for her premiere feature, 2018 crime thriller Little Woods (and co-did, with Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld, for Candyman).