Australian Directors Bring Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård Together in Dark Fairy Tale Wicker

Wicker is a darkly comic fairy tale co-directed by Australian Eleanor Wilson and her partner in life and cinema, Alex Huston Fischer, the duo behind the 2020 alien invasion drama Save Yourselves!. Filmed in rural Hungary, the story follows a fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) who is looked down upon by her village because of her smell — most pointedly by the snooty tailor's wife played by Australian actor Elizabeth Debicki. Stung by the meanness she encounters, the fisherwoman visits Peter Dinklage's basket weaver and commissions a wicker husband, bringing Alexander Skarsgård's imposing strawman to life. The cast also includes Nabhaan Rizwan as the tailor and Richard E Grant as a wildly unprofessional doctor.

Skarsgård wore an intricate full-body woven suit designed by Wētā Workshop, the New Zealand studio behind Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings films, working alongside costume designers, a prosthetics specialist, and a makeup artist. The suit took a minimum of 90 minutes to apply each day and was worn for up to eight hours at a time. Cinematographer Lol Crawley, known for The Brutalist, helped the directors realise their vision of a comedy that looks like a 17th-century Dutch painting.

When the trailer — featuring the image of Colman in post-coital bliss with the strawman — dropped, it sent the internet into a frenzy. Wilson noted the reaction mirrored the film itself: some people were horrified, others enthusiastic. Distributor Roadshow responded by pulling the release date forward. Wicker is in Australian cinemas from November 5.