Anne Hathaway Set To Produce, Star In Paranoia Thriller Puzzler

Anne Hathaway is one of our busiest actresses these days. When she isn’t hosting the Oscars, she’s holding down gigs in high-powered mega-sequels like The Dark Knight Rises or lining up roles in adaptation of Broadway classics. Now it sounds like she’s ready to try on another hat: Producer.

Hathaway will produce and star in the thriller Puzzler for Paramount, The Hollywood Reporter reports. It’s vaguely described as a female-driven paranoia story, and draws comparisons to Sydney Pollack’s 1975 drama Three Days of the Condor, starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway. The trade says Karl Gajdusek will tackle screenplay duties, though his most recent credit is Joel Schumacher’s Trespass, with Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman, which didn’t exactly light the world on fire.

Still, it’s encouraging to hear that Hathaway’s spending some of the industry cred that she has been building up by appearing in impressive films, collaborating with visionary directors (Ang Lee, Jonathan Demme and Christopher Nolan, to name a few), and being an overall ambassador for the Hollywood community. It would be in her best interest to lure one of her past collaborators to Puzzler, so that it gets off on the right foot.

There’s a small niche of actors in their late 20s and early 30s who are poised to transition into the power brokers of the next generation, the talents who should lead by example and throw around a little influence to make sure good films are produced. I’d put Hathaway in that company, and I’m excited to see if Puzzler is a project worth exploring.