EDIT: Part 2 added.

More photos from WonderCon have been added.

The actress reunites with ‘Atonement’ director Joe Wright for a stylized assassin-action movie, and their bond is obvious.

Shortly after she received an Oscar nomination at the tender age of 13, “Atonement” star Saoirse Ronan needed a new movie. Despite a drama background, she was intrigued by the title character in “Hanna,” an ethereally beautiful teen who also happens to be a ruthless assassin. But the project was stuck in development at Focus Features; filmmakers like Danny Boyle had come and gone.

Ronan had a simple solution: “They said they didn’t have a director,” the Irish actress (first name SER-sha) recalls. “So I said, ‘Why don’t you just ask Joe Wright to do it?’”

Wright was a strange choice, to say the least. The British filmmaker was best known for his cinematic adaptations of “Atonement,” Ian McEwan’s revered novel, and the Jane Austen classic “Pride and Prejudice.” He had won highbrow prizes. He didn’t watch many action movies, let alone direct them. A killing machine played by a teenage girl wasn’t much on his mind.

Unless, that is, it was a certain teenage girl. “If Saoirse hadn’t been involved I wouldn’t have given it much attention,” Wright says. “But because she was, I thought I should take it seriously.”

The result of that unlikely chain of events — “Saoirse hired me,” Wright says, only half-joking — is this coming weekend’s “Hanna.” The release is a Jason Bourne-like fugitive story, if Jason Bourne were an adolescent girl and “Bourne” director Paul Greengrass had spent years adapting period novels.

Ronan plays Hanna, a girl raised in isolation in northern Finland by a single father (Eric Bana) before separating from him to be pursued across Europe by coldhearted secret agents led by Cate Blanchett’s Marissa. Scenes of a vulnerable Hanna adjusting to the civilized world are interwoven with stylized action sequences of the girl violently offing her pursuers.

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Over lunch in the courtyard of a Beverly Hills restaurant, Wright and Ronan display one of the more unusual relationships in contemporary filmmaking — he, nearly 40, a dandy-ish BAFTA winner and expert in classic drama (next up: “Anna Karenina”); she a 16-year-old middle-class Irish lass with a luminous complexion and blue saucer-eyes. They fulfill multiple roles for each other — family member, meal ticket, muse — though at any given moment it’s a toss-up which one will play which part.

“I found it wonderful to be able to express my ideas and thoughts through another human being and see them actually realized on screen,” Wright says of Ronan.

Ronan, turning to him, reassures that his action-movie gamble was wise. “People are really interested to see what you’re going to do with this,” she tells him, offering an almost spousal level of validation.

A moment later, though, Wright begins to prod her: “So who’s your core audience?”

Ronan answers that she thinks it’s “everyone.” Then she turns to a reporter and declares in her lilting Irish accent. “When we work together it’s something that’s quite electric.” (Bana describes watching the two and seeing “a great shorthand in communication.”)

Ronan seems to relish Wright’s paternal role (Wright and his wife had their first child five weeks ago). When the filmmaker and actor were shooting a critical scene in “Atonement,” Ronan was horsing around between takes. Wright came over and told her to snap out of it. “He said, ‘Be serious and focus on what you’re doing, and don’t joke right now.’” Ronan recalled. “I got such a shock.”

When asked how she felt about Wright when they first met four years back, Ronan replies, “It was a long time ago. I don’t remember it very clearly. But the thing that stuck with me is that I basically fell in love with this man.”

Wright, with a sentimental drop in his voice: “Oh, Sersh.”

A chance casting

Oddly, their partnership almost never came to pass. To find the actor for “Atonement’s” Briony Tallis, the director cast a wide net. There was one candidate who seemed like the perfect fit. But it wasn’t Ronan, who didn’t really fit. Unlike the moody, conniving brunet Brit of McEwan’s novel, Ronan was not sullen. She was cheerful. She was blond. She was hyper-social. Most troublingly for a U.K. audience, she wasn’t English.

“This kid obviously had this extraordinary talent but was as different from Briony as you could get. Saoirse was always very outgoing and happy and talkative.” (Saoirse, interjecting, “I’m not talkative at all”). “She was not particularly introspective,” Wright adds. “And she was obviously Irish.”

He cast her anyway, and their collaboration went on to yield seven Oscar nominations and $125 million in worldwide box office. The movie turbocharged both of their careers.

They then went their separate ways — he to “The Soloist,” she to “The Lovely Bones,” both critical and commercial disappointments. When they reunited for “Hanna,” Ronan had grown up. “You were a bit freaked out when I went to see you in London [before production began], weren’t you?” Ronan asks Wright.

‘It was quite a strange readjustment,” Wright answers. He turns to a reporter. “Physically she’s changed. But she’s always been quite secure in her identity, and it’s a very strong identity. That hasn’t changed. It’s evolved.”

Ronan: “I hope I’ve changed a little bit, though.”

Wright: “You’ve evolved. You haven’t changed.”

Ronan was born in New York and raised about an hour south of Dublin (her father is also an actor), and her angelic face has allowed her to give characters a surprising edge. You rarely suspect that Briony is capable of scheming or that Hanna can flip an internal switch and become a killer, which makes it so much more startling when it happens. “I love playing those characters that don’t have to use words to tell the audience what they’re feeling,” Ronan says.

“Hanna” was shot on location in Germany, Finland and Morocco last year. Although some first-time action directors might have been tempted to play it safe, Wright went the other way in adapting Seth Lochhead’s and David Farr’s script — he made an auteurish action film, complete with flashy camera work, quick cuts and a driving score from the Chemical Brothers. There’s also a chilly formality to many of the interactions between the secret agents, as though the scenes are taking place in another world; indeed, for Hanna, who has spent most of her life in abject solitude, they are.

Bana says he appreciated that Wright was an action newbie. “It’s exciting working with a director who’s going into a different genre. You feel you’re a part of a journey into unchartered waters,” says the actor.

Wright admits he cut his teeth as he went. It was only as he got further into production that he felt he could take more risks. “As my confidence grew, the action sequences became bolder,” he says. “The film is an expression of my education.”

Asked then if he would make a movie in this genre again, Wright pauses, sounding unsure. “Yeah,” he says, tentatively. Then he repeats, slightly more sure, “Yeah.”

“The Jason Bourne films showed us that it’s possible to make an action-movie thriller with a social and moral conscience, unlike most action films that seem to be right-wing testosterone-driven misogynist pieces of crap that I find offensive on every level,” he says. “‘Bourne’ showed it’s possible to reach an audience that’s a little more self-aware.”

As for his star performer, Wright said it’s her innate skill — Ronan has had little formal training — that has fueled his desire to collaborate with her. Indeed, one source said they are close to reuniting again on Wright’s “Anna Karenina,” though the director declined to confirm that. “I definitely hoped after ‘Atonement’ I’d be a part of [Ronan's] future films. I certainly wouldn’t have predicted it would be an action-fairy-tale thriller,” he says of “Hanna.”

Ronan jumps in: “I knew Joe could do it even though film-wise he had only done period dramas. He would take this action movie, which was so well written, and turn it into something elegant. This character Hanna is a bit of a freak, and so it deserved to be a bit of a freak film.”

Wright: “Because I’m a bit of a freak?”

Ronan: “Yes.”

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Saoirse attend the 2011 WonderCon for Hanna. Here are the first photos from the event.

Thanks to M for the heads up.

After seeing the fantastic footage from Green Lantern and Cowboys and Aliens earlier today and yesterday, I was afraid that all the other presentations at WonderCon would pale in comparison. However, when I sat down for the Hanna panel, I found out I was dead wrong. Hit the jump for my thoughts on the footage and panel from the Hanna presentation.

It seemed a bit odd that director Joe Wright’s Hanna would be making an appearance at WonderCon merely a week before its release. But after seeing the footage from the film, I realized that we were given quite a treat. The panel consisted of Wright and star Saoirse Ronan, both of whom were delightfully charming and brutally honest.

The presentation kicked off with the theatrical trailer that began the marketing campaign for the film. Now I had heard that Hanna was a special sort of flick, and the marketing wasn’t telling the full story. I understood this once we got our first look at a full scene. In the short scene, we see Hanna escaping the facility she’s being held captive in. The score from The Chemical Brothers is pulsing and we see Hanna, gun in hand, staring down a scientist in her way. The scientist acquiesces to her unspoken command to place himself into a locker, then we see Hanna pull the trigger on the gun. Without seeing the victim, we cut to a splash of blood on Hanna’s cold, stoic face as she makes her way forward.

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We then see another scientist being thrown against the wall by something offscreen, before Hanna walks through the door and stares back at the stunned, and wounded, scientist. All of this footage was beautifully shot, with Wright taking an interesting and wholly original approach on shooting the action. There are some great long takes and surprising camera placements that give the audience a feeling of uncertainty and uneasiness.

The next scene we saw was a prolonged chase scene through a shipyard full of cargo crates. Ronan is being chased by two thugs and one of the film’s main antagonists, played by Tom Hollander. Wright pulls off a fantastic long-take using a steadicam, wherein we follow Hollander making his way through the crates below, with the camera periodically tilting upward at the precise moment to see Ronan’s character jumping across the current set of cargo crates. It really is a beautiful sequence, which culminates in a hand-to-hand combat scene between Hanna and two thugs, wherein she brutally dispatches them right in front of her dumbfounded travel companion she met on the road, a 16-year-old girl named Sophie played by Jessica Barden.

The panel that intersected and followed these two scenes was immensely insightful. Wright said that he came aboard the project after it was offered to Ronan and she insisted that he direct. Once he signed on, the film evolved into a “dark fairy tale” with European sensibilities that doesn’t quite take place in reality, but in a plane just above reality. He mentioned that the French New Wave and Italian cinema of the 70’s were large influences on the film, as well as Paul Greengrass’ Bourne films (though he noted that they purposefully tried not to imitate Greengrass’ style on Bourne, for fear of becoming another Bourne copycat film that didn’t stack up).

The central theme of the film, Wright noted, is innocence itself trying to survive in a harsher world. Hanna has been brought up completely cut off from society, so she’s void of any contamination from outside influences. Ronan commented that hearing music for the first time is a big deal for Hanna.

Wright said that he wanted the film to be layered, in that it can be enjoyed as an action/thriller, but also comments on social and gender issues, as well as metaphysical themes. It’s here that it seems the crux of the film lies. Wright commented on how modern feminism has been contaminated with filth. Reminiscing on the Spice Girls, Wright said he remembers hearing them proclaim “Girl Power” and thinking “that’s bullshit.” He gave a not-so-subtle nod to a certain film now in theaters that features posters with girls “kicking ass” while being sexualized and wearing bikinis. “And pigtails!” Ronan interjected. “Female empowerment is not about sex,” Wright proclaimed, and it’s clear that Hanna deals with these themes heavily.

Ronan said she hopes for more roles like Hanna that feature “interesting young women who leave an impression and force people to talk about these issues.” The character of Hanna encounters young Sophie in the film, whose mother is a “lost feminist.” Sophie is very much a “celebrity worshipping 16-year-old” and Wright’s idea was to put her and Hanna together and “confront these two worlds.”

While I was already sold on the premise and behind-the-scenes talent of the film, the Hanna presentation today only made me more excited to see it when it hits theaters. The footage looked great, with Wright making some very interesting directorial choices, specifically in regards to how he shot the film and staged the scenes. The music by The Chemical Brothers was also fantastic. Wright noted that they wrote some of the music before filming started, so they were actually playing the songs that end up in the finished film on-set while shooting some of the action sequences. Overall, I’d say Wright has a highly intriguing film on his hands, which seems to confront issues larger than “look at these explosions and gunfights.” I’m quite eager to check it out, and hope to see more movies made with this kind of passion and big ideas more often.

Hanna stars Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett, Tom Hollander, Olivia Williams and Jason Flemyng. The film hits theaters April 8th.

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LOS ANGELES — When the thrilling “Hanna” opens on April 8, audiences will see another mesmerizing performance from the soon-to-be-17 Saoirse Ronan. Already hailed for roles in “Atonement” and “The Lovely Bones,” this beautiful young actress exhibits fierce acting talents that give way off-screen to a charming Irish brogue and a smart teen-age sensibility.

Ronan’s skills aren’t lost on director Joe Wright and co-star Eric Bana, who shared details about her during morning interviews at the Four Seasons Hotel here. Meanwhile, Ronan chipped in with insight about her latest film, among other things.

“From the start, when I read the script, I thought it would be fun to play an action heroine,” she says. “That’s kind of what I thought this girl was going to be and not really anything else. I don’t mean that in a bad way; I just mean I thought that would kind of be it, but it turned out she wasn’t that at all.

“Hanna is quite simple in her outlook on life, but she’s also quite a complicated character. She’s been through a lot and she’s dealt with a lot, and she is dealing with a lot on this journey, too. Yet, she doesn’t ‘over-emote’ — ever — if that’s the right word. Naturally, I found her really interesting to play.

“On one hand, she’s so entirely different from me. At the same time, when we actually look at her situation and her journey and what she’s going through, it kind of mirrors what a teen-ager goes through, which is breaking away from the comfort of your family life and discovering the world for yourself.”

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That discovery, Ronan acknowledges, started early. “I kind of feel that since I’ve turned 16, I still don’t feel like I’m a woman, but I do feel like I’m a full-on teenager. I’m not 14 anymore, but ‘teen-hood’ is quite mixed up and confusing and sometimes a bit of a pain. It’s a great time to experiment with looks and fashion and things like that, figuring out who you are. I can see that’s starting to happen with me now.

“Age 16 is quite young, though, especially to drive. We’re not legally allowed to drive until 18 in Ireland. I’m almost 17 (on April 12), so I can go for my theory test and then my provisional license. Then, I can learn to drive. It’s all very complicated, but my dad is a brilliant driver. He can’t wait to teach me. My mom? Well, my mom is so cute. Actually, she doesn’t have her license.”

Talk then turns to director Wright. “We worked together before, on ‘Atonement,’ so I know Joe has tremendous belief in me, which I can really feel. I mean, it’s fantastic to know, as an actor, that your director truly believes that you can do this or do that.

“Here was a character I hadn’t taken on before — never anything even like her, for that matter — and Joe really developed her fully. For him to have the belief that I could do her justice was fantastic.

“That said, as a friend, we became closer. Four years after ‘Atonement,’ we were both heading in new directions, both kind of taking a risk with this film, but we knew that we were safe with each other.”

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Thanks to jp+ for pointing out.

Thanks to Caro for the link.

Saoirse (pronounced “sear-sha”) Ronan began her acting career at the age of 9. In 2007, she received worldwide acclaim for her portrayal of the 13-year-old Briony Tallis in Focus Features’ Atonement, which was her first film with Hanna director Joe Wright. The performance earned her Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, and Critics’ Choice Award nominations, among others. She was honored with Irish Film and Television (IFTA) Awards for both Best Supporting Actress and Rising Star.

She subsequently won the IFTA Award for Best Actress, honoring her performance as Susie Salmon in Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones. The portrayal also earned Ms. Ronan a Critics’ Choice Award; an award from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival; and a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Actress, among other honors.

Among her previous screen credits are Gil Kenan’s City of Ember, with Bill Murray, Tim Robbins, Toby Jones, and Harry Treadaway; Amy Heckerling’s I Could Never Be Your Woman, opposite Michelle Pfeiffer and Paul Rudd; Bill Clark’s The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey; and Gillian Armstrong’s Death Defying Acts, in which she starred alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones and Guy Pearce.

Ms. Ronan was most recently seen in Peter Weir’s The Way Back, starring alongside Ed Harris, Jim Sturgess, and Colin Farrell. She has wrapped production on Violet & Daisy, from Academy Award-winning writer/director Geoffrey Fletcher, with Alexis Bledel and James Gandolfini.

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Looks like Saoirse as Snow White The Brothers Grimm: Snow White’ is unlikely to happen as Lily Collins confirms for the role.

Collins (daughter of crooner Phil) is best known for her role as Sandra Bullock’s daughter in The Blind Side, but she also has Priest and Abduction (with Taylor Lautner) in the can.

She won the role after a superb audition according to Heat Vision, and she’ll be joining already-cast Julia Roberts (The Evil Queen) and Armie Hammer (Prince Andrew- bound to elicit a few sniggers from UK audiences…) on the project.

Saoirse Ronan was linked to the lead role a while back, and despite the fact the film has been going by the moniker The Brothers Grimm: Snow White for some time, Heat Vision claims it doesn’t have an official title yet.

Still, it’s looking like it’ll be the first of many rival Snow White movies out of the gate, considering all the setbacks that have recently hit the Viggo-less Snow White and the Huntsman…

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Thanks to M for the heads up.

‘Yardstick’, a new RTÉ Radio 1 play about teen bullying starring Saoirse Ronan, will be broadcast on Sunday night, 3 April.

Written by Joe O’Byrne, ‘Yardstick’ tells the story of Laura whose phone “takes on a personality of its own” and whose “dream worlds collide with the heart-breaking reality of teenage self-harm”.

The cast also includes Ronan’s father Paul, Emma Bolger, Amy Huberman and Rachel Pilkington.

‘Yardstick’ is on RTÉ One on Sunday at 8:02pm.

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