Skip to main content
The VergeThe Verge logo.The Verge homepage
The VergeThe Verge logo.

Breaking Bad's Michelle MacLaren to direct World War II film The Nightingale

Breaking Bad's Michelle MacLaren to direct World War II film The Nightingale

By Jacob Kastrenakes, a deputy editor who oversees tech and news coverage. Since joining The Verge in 2012, he’s published 5,000+ stories and is the founding editor of the creators desk.

Source Variety | Via The AV Club

Share this story

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Michelle MacLaren has signed on to direct a film adaptation of The Nightingale, a 2015 novel about French sisters trying to survive World War II. This'll be MacLaren's first big-screen feature, which is something a lot of people have been waiting for.

MacLaren has primarily been working in TV until now, executive producing Breaking Bad and directing some the show's most memorable episodes; more recently, she's directed several episodes of Game of Thrones. Then in 2014, she signed on to direct Wonder Woman, but dropped out just months later over "creative differences." So we've been waiting to see what she'd take on next.

MacLaren has been among the best directors working in TV

The Nightingale might not be as huge of a name as Wonder Woman, but the book, written by Kristin Hannah, has stuck on The New York Times' Best Sellers list for hardcover fiction for over a year. And this adaption has some other great talent involved. According to Variety, the screenplay was written by Ann Peacock, who wrote the first Narnia film, and John Sayles, who made The Brother from Another Planet, is doing additional work on the script alongside MacLaren.

While nothing is ever set in stone in Hollywood until a movie is literally being projected onto a screen for the public, it seems likely that MacLaren will end up seeing this project through. The Nightingale isn't part of a huge, sprawling property the way Wonder Woman is, which means there should be far less studio meddling in her plans for the project

More from Entertainment