‘Euphoria’ and ‘Challengers’ stars team up for new historical drama
Maude Apatow (‘Euphoria’) and Mike Faist (‘Challengers’) will star in ‘The Maid of Orleans,’ the next film from writer-director Sarah Elizabeth Mintz, Deadline reports. Mintz wrote and directed the film following her debut feature, ‘Good Girl Jane.’ She will also produce, alongside Shuli Harel and Jeff David. Astute Films is financing the project, and shooting reportedly begins this week. The movie follows a young woman who takes up a new job assisting a famously talented and complicated director on a French production of ‘Joan of Arc.’
‘Good Girl Jane’ had its world premiere at the 2022 Tribeca Festival, where it won the Founders Award for Best U.S. Narrative Feature and saw Rain Spencer (‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’) receive an award for Best Performance. It follows a lonely LA teen who falls in with a rowdy crowd and a charming drug supplier. Andie MacDowell (‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’) and Patrick Gibson also starred in the film, which draws on events from Mintz’s own teenage years. The project also marked her feature directorial debut, and she developed the film through the Sundance Fellows program’s 2017 Writers Intensive. Mintz studied at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where her thesis short film ‘Transit’ starred Dakota Johnson. She later worked as an assistant to Alejandro G. Iñárritu on ‘The Revenant,’ Cary Fukunaga on ‘True Detective,’ and Joachim Trier on ‘Louder Than Bombs.’
Meanwhile, Apatow played Lexi Howard in HBO’s ‘Euphoria,’ which ended after three seasons. Her acting career began at the age of seven in ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin’ (directed by her father, Judd Apatow), and she has since appeared in ‘Knocked Up,’ ‘Funny People,’ and ‘This Is 40.’
Faist, on the other hand, has a Tony nomination for playing Connor Murphy in ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ on Broadway. His first major film role came when he played Riff, the Jets leader in Steven Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’ (2021). He then played Art Donaldson, a tennis champion on a losing streak and the husband of Zendaya’s Tashi, in Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Challengers’ (2024). Moreover, his Netflix limited series ‘East of Eden,’ which also stars Florence Pugh and Christopher Abbott, released last week.
