Like many actresses these days, Hilary Swank has started a production company, 2S, with producing partner Molly Smith. One of their first optioned projects, the Emily Giffin wedding novel Something Borrowed, is the first film out of the gate, starring Ginnifer Goodwin, Kate Hudson and Colin Egglesfield. “The business is ever elusive, always exciting, always frustrating.,” she says. “I want to make movies that people talk about. There are only so many stories I can tell as an actor. I wanted to progress to be a producer.”
Not designed as your standard formula rom-com, the best-friend morality tale directed by Luke Greenfield opened May 6 to mixed reviews and modest box office. Fans of the book seem to have liked it best. “I don’t read reviews,” says Swank, who says they had creative control over the project. “It’s complicated and complex, not tied up in a nice bow. A lot of romantic comedies aren’t relatable. One of our favorite movies is Terms of Endearment; we like stories with a lot of heart that make you laugh and cry. We won’t always make romantic comedies.”
Swank, who has won two best actress Oscars, launched 2S Films in October 2007 with a first-look deal at Alcon Entertainment (The Blind Side). The actress had hoped to develop and produce a variety of “female-driven stories, being women ourselves, they’re the stories we know best,” she says. They’re not necessarily designed to give her roles to play, although one project, the Michelle Wildgen drama You’re Not You, boasts a female lead that Swank is interested in—about a woman in her 30s with Lou Gehrig’s disease and the woman who cares for her. She’s talking to Jeremy Renner to play the husband; DiNovi Pictures is producing.
Swank remains committed to fave author Giffin’s sequel Something Blue as well as Heart of the Matter. Still in the pipeline are film versions of the diet and lifestlye book French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mirielle Guiliano, and Karen Yampolsky’s thinly disguised revenge novel Falling Out of Fashion, about magazine editrix Jane Pratt. Swank and Smith are waiting for a new draft of Target, with A-lister Philip Noyce (who wisely bailed on the ill-fated Amelia), attached to direct.
