Elisabeth Moss to play horror author Shirley Jackson

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Josephine Decker is set to direct an adaptation of Susan Scarf Merrell's novel SHIRLEY, which told a fictional story built around real life author Shirley Jackson, and Decker has cast one of my favorite actresses to play the writer of such classics as The Lottery and The Haunting of Hill House.

That actress is Elisabeth Moss, who will be playing Shirley opposite THE SHAPE OF WATER's Michael Stuhlbarg as the author's husband Stanley.

SHIRLEY is about 

a young couple that moves in with Jackson and her Bennington College professor-husband, Stanley Hyman (Stuhlbarg), in the hopes of starting a new life. Instead, they find themselves fodder for a psycho-drama that inspires Jackson’s next major novel.

Sarah Gubbins has written the screenplay adaptation.

Jeffrey Soros and Simon Horsman's Los Angeles Media Fund is financing SHIRLEY, with Soros and Horsman producing the film alongside Moss, Gubbins, Sue Naegle, and Killer Films' Christine Vachon and David Hinojosa.

Decker had this to say about the project: 

No two people write more wildly rich female characters than Shirley Jackson and Sarah Gubbins. It's an honor to bring their female sorcery to life with these incredible partners. I can't wait to witness Elisabeth Moss' visceral inhabitation of Shirley's beautiful tortured spirit and Michael Stuhlbarg's unflinchingly charismatic-while-cruel Stanley."

If you'd like to read Merrell's novel, you can order a copy at THIS LINK.