Emma Stone and Alicia Vikander set for rival Agatha Christie biopics

[Alex Murphy]

The Danish Girl star Alicia Vikander and The Amazing Spider-Man’s Emma Stone have both been lined up to play a young Agatha Christie in biopics being developed at rival Hollywood studios.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Vikander has been approached by Sony to play the celebrated crime author in her formative years as a “proto-feminist” unhappy with traditional wife-and-mother expectations. Stone, on the other hand, has been pencilled in for Paramount’s take on Christie’s “missing” 11 days in 1926 – a subject already covered in Michael Apted’s 1979 film Agatha, which starred Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman.

The resurgence of interest in Christie follows a flurry of interest from film-makers in getting film versions of the writer’s work off the ground. A forthcoming adaptation of her 1934 yarn Murder on the Orient Express has Kenneth Branagh in the director’s chair and Angelina Jolie in the cast, is due to start shooting this summer and will be released in 2017. A version of the 1939 mystery And Then There Were None was successfully aired on BBC1 at Christmas, and leading British film compnay Working Title are moving ahead with a feature film adaptation to be directed by The Imitation Game’s Morten Tyldum. However, a Julian Fellowes-scripted adaptation of Crooked House appears to have stalled, after an announcement in 2012 that Possession director Neil LaBute was on board.

Emma Stone and Alicia Vikander set for rival Agatha Christie biopics