Tate Taylor, who worked with Jessica Chastain in an Oscar-nominated film The Help, is reuniting with the actress for Eve, an indie film that recently lost its original helmer.
Matthew Newton (Who We Are Now) was the original director of Eve but dropped out of the project due to the backlash of a history of alleged assault.
After the announcement of the project, a Care2 petition was circulated asking Chastain, who’s an activist for the Time’s Up movement, a movement against sexual harassment, to drop Newton from the film. In 2010, Racheal Taylor, an Australian filmmaker and Newton’s then-fiancee, accused Newton of “two unprovoked assaults” and was granted a two-year domestic violence order against him, which he later breached.
Two weeks ago, Newton left the project, stating “Yesterday I notified Jessica Chastain and the other producers on the film Eve that I will be stepping down as director. Since the announcement of this film, the responses, which are powerful and important, have not fallen on deaf ears. I am profoundly aware that I have a responsibility to lead where I have failed in the past.”
Chastain will be both star and produce Eve, a film that centers on a female assassin. Voltage Pictures is financing the film.
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