“WHAT HAPPENED to MONDAY?” PRODUCTION NOTES Synopsis In

“WHAT HAPPENED TO MONDAY?” PRODUCTION NOTES

Synopsis

In a not so distant future, where overpopulation and famine have forced governments to undertake a drastic One-Child Policy, seven identical sisters live a hide-and-seek existence pursued by the Child Allocation Bureau. The Bureau, directed by the fierce Nicolette Cayman, enforces a strict family planning agenda that the sisters outwit by taking turns assuming the identity of one person: Karen Settman. Taught by their grandfather who raised and named them - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday - each can go outside once a week as their common identity, but are only free to be themselves in the prison of their own apartment.

That is until, one day, Monday does not come home......

THE FOLLOWING PRODUCTION NOTES CONTAIN SPOILERS. DO NOT REVEAL KEY ELEMENTS OF THE SCRIPT IN FUTURE AND ANY ARTICLES.

“WHAT HAPPENED TO MONDAY?” An Introduction…

“WHAT HAPPENED TO MONDAY?” is set in 2073, a near-future, post- dystopian world where cataclysmic weather conditions, over-population and dwindling resources plague the planet. Civil and political unrest, wars and the refugee crisis have changed the landscape of the world. Most of the world powers have fallen and the European Federation has risen as the new superpower. For the human race to survive, the populace is forced to exist in an Orwellian society, where the draconian “One Child Policy” is law and The Child Allocation Bureau dictates that any family reproducing more than one child, will have them removed for cryofreezing until the world’s resources can sustain them.

Acclaimed Swedish actress NOOMI RAPACE (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Prometheus) takes on the challenge of playing seven identical Settman sisters: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, who have been raised in secret by their grandfather. The siblings share one public face, the stoic, uber-professional and successful Karen Settman who acts as the cover identity for all the sisters. Karen’s objective is to blend in and remain under the radar of the Child Allocation Bureau. She is the means by which the Settmans can earn money and survive.

Helmed by Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow, Dead Snow 2: Red vs Dead, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters), who received the Best Director accolade at the Puchon International Film Festival, the stellar supporting cast includes GLENN CLOSE as Nicolette Cayman, the head of the Child Allocation Bureau and WILLEM DAFOE as Terrence Settman, the siblings’ grandfather.

The original screenplay for “WHAT HAPPENED TO MONDAY?” made it onto the prestigious Hollywood Blacklist. Screenwriter Max Botkin first came up with the concept back in 2001 and the identical siblings were originally male. When director Tommy Wirkola boarded the project, he felt that making them female would add a more exciting dynamic and having long admired the work of Noomi Rapace, he figured she could pull off the challenge of portraying the seven siblings. Wirkola called Rapace and said that he wanted to pitch her to the producers as the lead. Botkin called this development, “A stroke of genius on Tommy’s part”.

Raffaella De Laurentiis and her production executive Matthew Feitshans had optioned the script from Botkin and their agents, CAA took it to market and Vendome picked it up. When the film became a European co-production, Kerry Williamson took on the rewrites and when Noomi Rapace and Glenn Close signed up, SND boarded to fully finance the movie.

“Kerry came on board when we made the decision to make the protagonists female” explains director Tommy Wirkola, “we spoke to a lot of writers and Kerry just felt right from the first moment. Her ideas and her way of thinking were great. She grew up with a lot of siblings, which was of course important and fun, considering what she was going to write” he recalls. “We worked hard on the seven main characters, making them real. Separating seven dudes hanging out would have been harder. One of the things we spent time on was making sure the audience could separate the siblings from each other. We also spent time refining the character of Nicolette Cayman, to make her more of a realistic character rather than just being black or white. When you have an actress like Glenn Close on board, you want to give her a lot to chew on. We also created a bigger role for Terrence, the grandfather who is played by Willem Dafoe” concludes Wirkola.

Production commenced in the Fall of 2015 in Romania, principally at the Castel Studios on the outskirts of Bucharest. The studios have a long and colorful history and have played host to a raft of successful Hollywood movies over the past two decades, including Cold Mountain, Borat, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Vampire Academy and the more recent projects in the Hellraiser franchise.

One of the biggest locations used in Romania was Constanza as producer Raffaella De Laurentiis explains, “Constanza is a great location. There’s a very old part of the city and the mayor allowed us to take it over. It’s one of the biggest harbors in Europe and we got access to that. It was pretty amazing. In Bucharest, we shut off the main boulevard every Sunday between 6am and 10am for big crowd scenes, some with 500 extras. Our talented Romanian production team made those big days easy. In fact, the most challenging part of the film was being in the loft apartment set for ten weeks and figuring out how Noomi would play seven different roles.”

The seasoned filmmaking talent gathered for “WHAT HAPPENED TO MONDAY” includes cinematographer Jose David Montero, production designer Joseph A. Hodges, make-up designer Giannetto De Rossi, VFX Supervisor Bryan Jones, costume designer Oana Paunescu and editor Martin Stoltz.

Producers Raffaella De Laurentiis and Philippe de Rousselet are thrilled with both Wirkola and the cast gathered for the project, “As young as he is, Tommy is one of the best director we’ve worked with. He’s clear-headed, thinks on his feet and knows exactly what he wants. Noomi is amazing in these seven roles, I can’t think of another actor who could do that. She’s been on set every day, playing each scene against herself from multiple perspectives. It’s been the biggest challenge of the movie – how do we credibly, pull off the seven siblings? Producer Philippe Rousselet adds “Noomi Rapace loves challenging herself. She's didn’t stay in her comfort zone. The role required an actress with talent and guts and Noomi Rapace certainly proved to be the perfect match. It has been fascinating to watch Noomi getting into the roles, to

witness how she went from one character to another character to another character. All of that in one day with different characters and different looks. Nobody else could have pull that off.”

WHAT SETS THE SETTMAN SISTERS APART?

Director Tommy Wirkola knew that Noomi Rapace’s presence and personality would shine through in all seven of the siblings: “It was important to create small nuances to help the audience because you only have a short amount of time to establish all of these characters”. Keen to avoid them becoming caricatures, Wirkola wanted to delve deeper than that and of course Noomi was instrumental in finding those touches that steer the siblings in different directions.

Monday is highly intelligent, sophisticated, sharp, tough, controlled, ambitious and driven. She has to cope with the worst day of the week – Monday. She most truly represents the character of Karen Settman. “The difference between her and the other sisters is that she’s always stuck to the rules and she’s always done what’s expected. For many years she’s sacrificed herself. When she meets someone and falls in love, a storm happens inside and she starts to question everything she’s learned and the rules she grew up with. She might seem cold and selfish but under that she has a big heart and she’s a girl dreaming of love and following her own dreams”, notes Noomi Rapace.

Tuesday is a pot-smoking, easy going, ‘new ager’. “Tuesday is a free soul. She’s very sensitive and smokes a lot of weed to calm herself down. She cares a lot about her sisters. She’s a happy soul who is soft and sensitive and she takes everything in. She’s also funny. She wears big skirts and lots of jewellery. You know she would be a hippy girl if she could live out in the world”, observes Noomi Rapace.

Wednesday is athletic, feisty, tough, confident, confrontational and a trained fighter. “Wednesday is quite tomboyish. She loves training and is into martial arts. She’s always boxing, training and working out. The other sisters keep telling her she can’t work out too much because she’s getting too big and they all need to have the same silhouette to protect their cover. She’s practical and tough – a real fighter who puts her fears aside. Wednesday is like a little pit bull”, notes Noomi Rapace

Thursday is the rebel. She’s yearns for freedom but she loves her sisters and becomes the leader. “She’s wild at heart and feels trapped in the situation she lives in. When she was growing up, she was always breaking the rules and was the opposite of Monday. She wanted to do things her way and it was difficult to accept authority and the rules set by Terrence their grandfather. During their

journey, Thursday really becomes the leader. She takes on more responsibility and becomes an adult”, shares Noomi Rapace.

Friday is an introverted, quiet genius who is brilliant with technology, math and science. She’s the brains behind the operation. “Friday is in her own world. She’s very smart but probably has ADHD or Asperger’s. She has her own systems and doesn’t like interacting too much with people. She won’t look you in the eye. She’s not physical and doesn’t like to be touched. She hates going out in the real world so Friday is her worst day. The other sisters are dying to go out but she doesn’t want to. She’s insanely good with computers and is the brain of the family and also the anchor. Friday is the one who brings success to Karen Settman but she’s not a very social person and all her emotions are locked in”, notes Noomi Rapace.

Saturday is extrovert, a party animal, funny, sassy and clearly never had to work a day in her life. “Saturday is blonde, sexy and girlie. She loves pink like Barbie and she loves a drink. She’s good humoured – she makes fun of the other sisters and also of herself. Saturday has a good attitude to everything and underneath she’s very romantic. She fell in love when she was 17 but her grandfather was very hard on her and said that she had to sacrifice that for her sisters because being emotional makes you vulnerable”, explains Noomi Rapace.

Sunday is gentle, empathetic and religious. “Sunday is motherly and very grounded. She’s always thinking of someone else rather than focusing on herself. She just cares about the other sisters and has taken on this role as an anchor. If two of them are fighting, she’ll always try to build a bridge” explains Noomi Rapace.

Monday and Thursday are the two most prominent characters in the Settman seven. Both dream of a day when they can live independently but they often clash on this point and the rules that govern their existence.

Noomi worked with director Tommy Wirkola to the build the uniqueness of each sister: “Tommy and I kind of feel like we’re the parents, giving birth to the different sisters and building their characteristics together”.

Noomi worked with Giannetto De Rossi on creating the hair and make-up looks for each sister and with costume designer Oana Paunescu on the colours and shapes of their clothing, “Different costumes will help the body and different hairstyles and make-up will bring each character to life” explains Rapace. “When you’re in the make-up chair and you’re being changed into Monday for example, my whole face changes. I know emotionally and psychologically I go into a place within that automatically changes my facial muscles. The whole process is like a marriage between me, Tommy, the script, hair, make-up and costume, and then my whole inner landscape of emotions, feelings and thoughts” she concludes.

THE CHALLENGES OF ONE ACTRESS PLAYING SEVEN CHARACTERS IN ONE MOVIE

Developing and creating any character takes a lot of work for an actor, so when Noomi Rapace signed up to portray all seven of the Settman siblings in “WHAT HAPPENED TO MONDAY”, she set herself a challenge that many other actors would shy away from. Rapace seized the opportunity with all the energy and commitment for which she’s known. Once immersed in the project she said it was “Absolutely insane and scary, difficult and fun. It’s the most challenging thing I’ve ever done”.

After an initial two-week rehearsal period in May 2015, Rapace says “I kind of knew who these girls were. At first I thought, ‘how am I going to find seven different personalities?’. My goal in everything I do is to make it real and a place that’s as close to me as possible. I realized after a few days that they’re all just different sides of me and at that point I kind of felt like I’d landed and I started to breathe it in”.

Rapace felt “like I kind of just slide in and out and I know exactly how they are going to react. I know who they are. I realize that at different stages of my life, I’ve lived these different sisters. When I was 13 or 14 years of age, I was more hippyish like Tuesday and when I was a bit older I was like Wednesday because I was into fighting and was always super tomboyish. For a period I was like Thursday – a super angry punk and always hating everybody. I had this blonde/pink period where I was more like Saturday. So, I can clearly see chapters of my life in them”.

“I can turn into pretty much anything” observes Rapace, “it’s probably the effect my life’s had and they way I’ve lived. I’ve moved around a lot and as a kid you learn how to adapt to different situations and you become a chameleon because you have to melt into different situations and you learn to read how people act and you become a part of it. You become a survivor. Becoming different personalities isn’t a foreign language to me. I’ve done it my whole life, just in different forms”.

The technical side of shooting the seven siblings was the one key area that was more complicated for Rapace, “If we shoot a scene with doubles, I have to show my doubles what I’m going to do before I’ve done it. I have to kind of direct them and show them how they should move, how they should sit and when they’ll stand up. I have a sort of bird’s perspective on every scene. I have so many angles I need to approach it from and I have to take responsibility in a completely different way. Tommy and I are constantly reminding each other that we can’t let the technical angle take over. At the end of the day the relationships between the sisters, is everything”.

Perhaps one of the most challenging scenes, was the big fight scene involving six of the sisters, as Wirkola recalls: “Basically, three intruders come into the house thinking it’s going to be an easy match, but of course it’s not because

the sisters are strong and they have very different skills. They fought with casseroles, boiling water, with a refrigerator and an iron! It got really messy and bloody at the end but it was fun to shoot. It was like fighting a herd of cats!”

“Tommy is incredible. There have been days where I’ve felt like I’m breaking and it’s a real struggle to keep myself together. There have been times where I can’t think and my body’s in so much pain from the fighting, but Tommy’s always been like a rock holding me up”.

With the complexities of the technical shooting process, multiple cameras and Rapace playing multiple characters, everything needed to be incredibly precise. “A lot of the time, I’m acting with tennis balls on sticks because it’s green screen and I have an earpiece and I’m imagining myself doing stuff, then I have to imagine what I’m doing as they other character when I step into her. Sometimes I’d have my doubles reading the lines behind the scenes and hiding, so I’d just be listening to voices and trying to imagine what they’re doing. There’s always so much going on. In a normal situation, you listen to someone and react so I was afraid it would be like seven monologues, so that’s why I had to create this bird’s perspective and look at the scene from above”.

THE VFX PERSPECTIVE

When a scene involved all of the sisters, the team would adopt different techniques for different shots, “One of the first things I said to the producer before we started was, ‘I need a lot of time’” recalls Tommy Wirkola. “We have a longer shooting schedule because it just takes time – the make-up changes are just one thing and the technical side of getting things to line up and using the motion control rigs mean it’s very painstaking and time consuming. We’ve created something very unique because we’ve mixed techniques, we’ve used face replacements, split screen, static cameras, doubles and because she has such a distinctive face, we actually made Noomi masks for when the sisters were doing background action, like working on the computer, cooking, training, etc.”

“By the time all was said and done, we shot for 90 days in Romania – that’s a remarkably long schedule but we’re all still talking to each other and all having a good time” laughs producer Raffaella De Laurentiis”.

“I’d see Tommy with Jose (DOP) and Bryan (VFX) and our first assistant director staring at the storyboards working out how to duplicate Noomi. Some of it we did with motion control, using a small version called Revolver and we challenged this piece of equipment to the maximum of its capabilities. We’ve done stuff on this movie that’s never been done before – that was the difficult part” admits De Laurentiis.

For cinematographer Jose David Montero, the replication of the siblings posed a lighting challenge as he explains, “On a conventional movie, you cheat all the time with the lighting and with the background. Here we can’t because once we lock the camera and raise the lighting, it has to be like that for the whole sequence. Because we have the replication and the different layers, if we move something, they don’t match, we have to go back again and of course that’s a disaster for the schedule. The other challlenging part is working on a closed and confined set. We want to give the impression that the ceilings have hidden layers so the spaces narrow. We have to use three cameras and sometimes four, green screen or blue screen and we have to light it, so throwing all of that into the mix is a challenge”.

Visual effects supervisor, Bryan Jones had a major challenge on his hands with this movie, so it was all about planning and collaboration as he recalls, “Most of the scenes were storyboarded so I’d look at them with the Tommy, the first assistant director and our DOP, we’d work out the best order to approach it then Noomi would come to set and show us how she wanted to perform and we’d work out where to go from there to make sure the cameras worked for all the tricks. When I wasn’t on set, I’d take the dailies and assemble the shots, compositing on my laptop to make sure we had all the elements to make it work”.

When Rapace switches between characters she has her own ritual to assist the transition, “I take the make-up off myself and clean myself after each character, then I go into Giannetto and Mirella and start on a clean page. I always have a moment for myself then when I step out of the make-up chair and go into the studio, I’m in the next character. It’s an emotional process and it’s actually been more organic and intuitive than I thought it would be”.

NICOLETTE CAYMAN – VILLAIN OR GENIUS?

Nicolette Cayman is the chief antagonist of the piece. She’s the face of villainy and oppression in this world. Cayman is the head of the Child Allocation Bureau. She is scarred by a dark past that saw her own siblings die from starvation. She clings on to her ideals, believing that the one child law is the only means of curbing the growing population and allowing the human race to survive.

Cayman’s value system seems to be logical, if not extreme, until we discover she’s concealing the real methods for processing illegal siblings.

She is motivated by the trauma of her dark past and by the desire to preserve all animals and wildlife on the planet. She also looks to her own political aspirations and has a desire for power and control.

Actress Noomi Rapace was “beyond excitement” at the prospect of working opposite Glenn Close in the role of Nicolette Cayman: “She’s an iconic actress and I grew up watching her films. When she came in she was the most humble, nice, funny person and so easy to work with. I went into make- up and she was already there, and normally I play really loud music when I’m in the make-up chair. I asked her if she was OK with music and she said, ‘yeah sure’, so I put something nice and quiet on for a change! Then she asked me if I liked hip-hop and she told me to put some on. So, we played hip-hop super loud. It was very funny. She really surprised me. Glenn is an amazing person”.

Tommy Wirkola also regards Glenn Close as an iconic actress who he respected and admired when he was growing up: “She scared the shit out of me in some of the films she did! But, from the first meeting, she confirmed how very knowledgeable she is. She knows so much about our themes in this film and where the world is heading with regard to nature, animals and over-population. Glenn was very invested from the first moment and a lot of her ideas regarding Nicolette’s character and her motivation ended up in the film, as well as the dialogue and the way she phrases herself”.

Glenn Close sees Cayman as “a woman who suffered terrible trauma when she was young. She lost her whole family during the period when there wasn't enough food. She was the one that they decided would survive. So she comes with huge psychological baggage and feels very, very strongly in trying to save the planet for future children, for future generations”.

Creating and building the character of Cayman was something that Glenn Close became very involved in before she started shooting. She explains the reasoning behind the decision not to make her the classic villain of the piece, “I think just being what people perceive as a bad person or a villain is boring. Once you've played Cruella de Vil who is the devil, you know, no-one is worse

than Cruella. So, I’m always interested in the reasons for somebody's behavior. Cayman is in a terrible place and in order to make the world a habitable place, you have to have less people. How do you do that when people aren't responsible? At one point she says, ‘We haven't used our superior brain in order to survive on the planet. We have not learned how to sustain either the planet or ourselves. If we had used our brains we would have figured it out’. She sees the world as being at a point where you have to legislate change because of overpopulation”.

The world that Cayman inhabits is one that’s “Trying to recover from a terrible global breakdown” explains Close. “Nicolette Cayman is a very powerful woman on a global level and director Tommy Wirkola had very strong ideas on how he wanted her to look, as Glenn Close explains, “If you look at women leaders around the world, they basically have this style of hair, short and this colour. I guess it's easy to keep up. Cayman is not somebody who spends a lot of time thinking about how she looks. She cares about her image, but I don't think she would spend a lot of time shopping. If she could wear a uniform she would”.

“I hadn't thought of her as a villain really. Her ideals and her thoughts are very fascinating, and it's, it's true that this planet has to sustain and it's being used very rapidly. Her dedication is to try to preserve it as much as she can. There are some ugly things that could happen if we aren’t responsible about our planet. We're a contentious species, so I think this is a movie that I hope will get a lot of people thinking as well as being entertained. I think we will have done our job if they go out really questioning and thinking about how humanity relates to the rest of the planet” concludes Tommy.

Writer Kerry Williamson explains her view of Cayman, “I feel what’s most interesting about the character is that what she’s doing is so heinous, so terrible and such an atrocity, but, throughout the film, you understand why she’s making the choices she’s making. She enforces the lawd to save a future for the children. The irony is, she’s taking lives to save lives”.

CREATING THEIR WORLD

Screenwriter Max Botkin envisioned a near-future, soft sci-fi world akin to Margaret Atwood’s speculative fiction where a ‘what if’ scenario sees seven identical siblings “in a set of circumstances designed to optimize the drama” explains Botkin. “I imagined what it would be like to be imprisoned in a small space with six other people, with restrictions on your ability to travel or live apart from one another, on who you could love and how you could conduct yourself in public. A world where the one child law and the Child Allocation Bureau enforces the law with a fatal penalty” elaborates Botkin.

“I loved the idea of seven people equally sharing a life, sharing every detail of their day-to-day so that there would be continuity for the others and mystery and chaos would ensue if one of them didn’t come home one day”.

The world that the Settman siblings inhabit is intriguing because it’s near- future and easily an extension of our world. “It’s identifiable, relatable and Orwellian, with the major issues plaguing the planet being over-population and a dearth of resources to sustain the human race” explains Botkin. “It’s a world that could be realized if we continue to squander our natural resources, if the population continues to boom and to reside or migrate to big cities”.

Botkin always visualized the Settman’s world to be a city like Havana, Cuba in the sense that it’s a place where technology has advanced in some areas but has plateaued or even devolved in other ways.

“At its core, the film is about what humans will endure in order to survive. Is a fraction of a life better than none at all? Is life worth living if we can’t be true to ourselves? What’s the breaking point for each of us? If we can no longer live in shackles, what would we be willing to do to free ourselves? asks Botkin.

“The film is about identity and carving out a unique persona for yourself, when the world is telling you to conform, or isn’t validating your existence at all. It’s a rare blend of pure popcorn entertainment and thought-provoking social commentary. I really hope it will spark dialogue about the timely, universal issues as well as being enjoyed for its whodunnit mystery, visual flare and pulse-pounding action” concludes Botkin.

“We wanted to create a world that feels real and gritty” notes Tommy Wirkola, “I’m very inspired by films like Looper, Blade Runner and Children of Men, where this world feels close and plausible”.

Wirkola was keen to portray the scope and scale of the future through the Settman siblings’ environment: “We’re trying to portray a future that’s insanely over-populated and to have that effect, we needed to feel trapped along with the siblings. We don’t have tons of sweeping big shots of the city where we pull the camera over the skyscrapers. We want to be on the ground with her,

we want to experience the future how she’s experiencing it. For the most part we really tried to keep it claustrophobic and crowded”.

Bucharest, Romania proved an ideal location as Tommy Wirkola notes, “It has such an interesting feel to it, being a combination of very old and very beautiful, as well as having the Soviet era feel and the building blocks from the Ceausescu years. Of course in the last decade, it’s started blossoming again. That combination of modern, Cold War and old and truly beautiful buildings made it plausible for our future world. Also, Bucharest hasn’t been shot to death in film terms, like many other towns around the world have. We found some really cool, interesting places that have never been put on film before”.

Noomi Rapace who portrays the seven Settman siblings feels that you can just place the film in one genre, “Tommy and I were talking about this. It’s not just a sci-fi or action film, with this film we’re walking into rooms that nobody’s been in before. It’s almost like we’ve created a new genre. It’s has strong characters, it’s beautiful, it’s heartbreaking, it’s sad, it’s strong and it’s full of fighting souls who are fighting for their own survival”.

“It has a lot of action and my body’s a complete mess from that, but I didn’t just want to run around with a gun looking cool. Everything needs to be connected and there for a reason. So, I worked with James our stunt co- ordinator and every fight and action sequence has been built for me. For example, Sunday doesn’t fight but she can grab a pot of hot water and slam it into someone’s head even though she’s wearing heels. Wednesday loves fighting, she’s been practicing her whole life. Thursday is more of a warrior, she’s just like an animal and everything’s about focus and not giving up”.

INSPIRED CASTING

“The casting choices were brilliant across the board” notes screenwriter Max Botkin, “it’s a beautiful blend of legendary talent like Glenn Close and Willem Dafoe with one of Europe’s most exciting rising stars, Noomi Rapace in the lead. Noomi’s ability to play strong characters both in terms of physicality and emotion, allows men and women to connect with her portrayal of the Settman seven. Noomi has guts, discipline and a risk-taking attitude that’s required for such a role. In my humble opinion, she’s one of a handful of believable female action stars who can actually dig deep in her performance”.

Botkin was impressed by the inspired choice of Glenn Close to play Nicolette Cayman as he explains, “She brings a warmth and motherly quality to a role that could easily have become grim. She was active in developing and shaping her character to make Cayman a truly unique villain as opposed to a moustache-twirling cliché”.

“Willem Dafoe brought complexity to his portrayal that delicately threads the needle between a loving father figure, a resentful/remorseful caretaker and a militant disciplinarian. He has a great deal to work with emotionally” observes Botkin, “and he has the range to deliver the goods. Watching him work on set was a masterclass”.

Noomi Rapace classes Dafoe as “another one of my heroes”. When he was cast as Terrence Settman, the siblings’ grandfather, it gave Rapace the career opportunity of a lifetime, as she elaborates: “It’s kind of crazy that I get to work with people I’ve been dreaming of working with”. Just before he committed to the role, Rapace was shooting a movie in Toronto and she wrote Dafoe an email explaining how happy is would make her if he boarded What Happened to Monday? “He wrote me back this long email and I had tears in my eyes, he said the most beautiful things. It meant so much to me. When he first came in, we had two scenes together and I was a bit nervous but he’s an incredible person and an incredible actor. He was here for 10 days but I wanted to take his passport so he couldn’t leave – I wanted to have more scenes with him!”

Dafoe felt that Rapace was “very right and ready” for the challenge in a script that he calls an “audacious thing of this central character that is seven characters”. “Noomi wrote to me with the producer and director’s blessing and kind of invited me to join in as their guardian, the caretaker of the seven identical girls”.

“Noomi has terrific emotional commitment” notes Dafoe, “she’s worked with Tommy and Raffaella to flesh it out to make these very distinct characters. I think they’re a gallery of fantasy characters for her. When she told me about the project, I could tell it was a dream for her and a great opportunity. I was seduced by her into playing the grandfather”.

Dafoe’s character, Terrence Settman is the father of a girl who gives birth to seven children in a world where you’re only allowed one child. “She has them clandestinely in this makeshift hospital and she dies in the process of childbirth. No-one knows who the father is, so I’m basically given the responsibility of raising these seven little babies. So, it’s an interesting problem. Terrence is an interesting character because you’re not quite sure where he fits into the world or where he comes from but he’s obviously given everything up to take care, nurture and teach these seven children. The big trick being that he has to keep them hidden. They build this safe house and you see him in flashback raising these children”.

Fascinatingly, Dafoe’s own great uncle was the guardian of the famous Canadian Dionne quintuplets in the 1930s as he shares, “He was a simple country doctor who delivered them and because the family already had several children, the state was worried they wouldn’t be able to take care of them, so they took them away and he became their guardian and raised them in a very special environment. There were fewer multiple births before modern fertility practices and when there were, the infants often didn’t survive. His only innovation was to put them in a chicken incubator, which there was some wisdom in because it wasn’t common practice. With my family history of multiple birth guardians, I felt a concrete connection to the Grandfather Stettman role.”

CAST & CREW LIST

PRINCIPAL & SUPPORTING CAST Noomi Rapace - “Karen Settman” Glenn Close - “Nicolette Cayman” Willem Dafoe - “Terrence Settman” Marwan Kenzari - “Adrian Knowles” Christian Rubeck - “Joe” Pål Sverre Hagen - “Jerry” Clara Read - “Young Monday-Sunday" Tomiwa Edun - “Eddie” Cameron Jack - “Dutch” Cassie Clare - “Zaquia”

CREW (SHORT LIST) Producers - Raffaella De Laurentiis, Philippe Rousselet, Fabrice Gianfermi Executive Producers - Thierry Desmichelle, Guy Stodel Co-Producers - Sylvain Goldberg, Serge de Poucques, Max Botkin, Adrian Politowski, Gilles Waterkeyn, Kerry Williamson Associate Producer - Matthew Feitshans Line Producers - Hester Hargett-Aupetit, Bogdan Moncea Director - Tommy Wirkola Writers - Max Botkin and Kerry Williamson Production Designer - Joseph Hodges Director of Photography - Jose David Montero Editor - Martin Stoltz Composer - Christian Wibe Casting - Gillian Hawser Make-Up & Hair Design - Giannetto & Mirella De Rossi Costume Design - Oana Paunescu VFX Supervisor - Bryan Jones Sound Design/Supervising Sound Editor - Karen Baker Landers

ABOUT THE CAST

NOOMI RAPACE

Noomi Rapace captured the eyes of the international entertainment community with her commanding, unnerving and critically acclaimed portrayal of Lisbeth Salander in the film adaptations of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest.

This Spring, Rapace will be seen starring in Steven Shainberg’s sci-fi adventure thriller Rupture, alongside Peter Stormare and Kerry Bishe. The film centers on a single mother struggling to raise her son alone and who is abducted by a mysterious organization. While trying to escape, she uncovers an extraordinary secret about herself. Ambi Media Group is releasing the film in the US April 28, 2017. Following that, she has Mikael Hafstrom’s thriller Unlocked, opposite Michael Douglas and Orlando Bloom. The film follows one of the CIA's top interrogators, ‘Alice Racine’ (Rapace), whose career was sidelined when she failed to unlock a prisoner in time to save the lives of dozens of innocent people from a terrorist attack in Paris. Now leading a quiet life as a caseworker, ‘Alice’ is unexpectedly called back into action when the CIA apprehends a suspect believed to have direct knowledge of another imminent attack. Alice successfully unlocks the suspect, but before she can fully convey the recovered intelligence to her superiors, she gets a call from her superior that heightens her suspicions. Quickly realizing she's been duped, she narrowly escapes, and finds herself on the run. Grasping that the CIA has been deeply compromised, Alice turns to the few people she can trust as she seeks out the responsible parties and races against the clock to prevent a deadly biological attack on the citizens of London. It is scheduled for release in the UK from Lionsgate on May 5, 2017. Additionally, Rapace has Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant, alongside Michael Fassbender and Katherine Waterson. The film follows the crew of the colony ship Covenant when they discover what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world. Twentieth Century Fox is set to release the film May 19, 2017.

Later this year, Rapace will be seen starring in Tommy Wirkola’s What Happened to Monday?, with Willem Dafoe and Glenn Close. This film follows a set of septuplets (all played by Rapace) who must avoid being put discovered by the government in a world where families are limited to one child due to overpopulation. Netflix will release the film August 18, 2017. Following that, she will be seen co-starring in David Ayer’s fantasy realm film Bright, alongside Will Smith and Joel Edgerton. The grounded cop procedural is set in a world populated not only with humans but also fantastical mythical creatures. The story follows a human cop (Smith) who is forced to work with an Orc (Edgerton) to find a weapon everyone is prepared to kill for. Netflix is set to debut the film December 8, 2017.

Rapace will soon begin lensing Robert Budreau’s thriller Stockholm, co- starring opposite Ethan Hawke. The film is based on the 1973 bank heist and hostage crisis in Stockholm that was documented in the 1974 New Yorker article “The Bank Drama” written by Daniel Lang. Hostages bonded with their captors and turned against the authorities, giving rise to the psychological phenomenon known as “Stockholm syndrome.” Following that, Rapace will begin production on Vicky Jewson’s “Close,” based on the true story of hardened female bodyguard Jacquie Davis. The film follows ‘Jacquie’ (Rapace) and her teenage heiress client through a violent kidnap attempt that forces them to be on the run as wanted fugitives. In 2018, Rapace will film Michael Mann’s Ferrari, opposite Hugh Jackman. The film takes place in 1957 and follows ‘Enzo Ferrari’ (Jackman) and estranged wife ‘Linda Ferrari’ (Rapace) through their fiery relationship at a time when passion, failure, success and death and life all collided in Ferrari’s battle for supremacy against rival Maserati. Rapace began her acting career at the age of seven, in Iceland's In the Shadow of the Raven. She has since gone to appear in over twenty films and television shows. In 2007, she made her mark on the big screen with a breakthrough performance in the 2007 Danish film, Daisy Diamond. In the film, Rapace portrays a troubled teen-mother who leaves her home to pursue a dream, ultimately failing and having a breakdown with fatal consequences. For her performance, she was honored with the Bodil Award (Denmark) and a Robert Award for Best Actress (Denmark). She garnered high praise for her breakthrough performance in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first installment of the Millennium Trilogy. She won the Best Actress Guldbagge Award (Sweden) and the Best Actress International Jupiter Award (Germany) in addition to being nominated for an Orange British Academy Film Award for Lead Actress and a Best Actress European Film Award for her role. Rapace garnered subsequent praise for her performances in the second and third installments, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest. Additional film credits include Daniel Espinosa’s film adaptation of the critically acclaimed Tom Rob Smith novel, Child 44 opposite Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Joel Kinnaman and Jason Clarke; Michaël R. Roskam’s crime-drama The Drop alongside Tom Hardy and James Gandolfini; Niels Arden Oplev’s Dead Man Down in which she reunited with director and starred opposite Colin Farrell; Guy Ritchie's sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, opposite Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law; as well as Brian De Palma’s Passion, alongside Rachel McAdams and Karoline Herfurth. Notably, in 2011, Rapace starred in Pernilla August's directorial debut of the Swedish film Beyond (Svinalägorna), which won the Venice Film Festival Critic's Week prize as well as the Nordic Council Film Prize, and additionally, for which Rapace received a Guldbagge Best Actress' Award for her performance. That same year, Rapace was starred in Pål Sletaune's Norwegian thriller Babycall, for which she received the Best Actress honor at the Rome Film Festival.

GLENN CLOSE

A six-time Academy Award nominee, Close has completed filming the title role in a film adaptation of Meg Wolitzer’s bestselling novel, The Wife, with Jonathan Pryce and Christian Slater for Swedish director Bjorn Runge; and on Julian Fellow’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Crooked House alongside an all-star cast that included Max Irons, Christina Hendricks, Gillian Anderson and Terence Stamp. Other films in which she has starred and that are due for release are the sci-fi thriller What Happened to Monday, The Girl With All the Gifts, Wilde Wedding and the comedy Bastards.

Close reprised her Tony Award-winning role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Sunset Boulevard in a new production at the London Coliseum in the Spring of 2016. For that performance she won a London Evening Standard Award and has been nominated for an Olivier Award. The full production, starring Close, opened on Broadway this February, for an exclusive limited engagement.

Close made her feature film debut in George Roy Hill's The World According to Garp, earning her awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Board of Review as well as her first Academy Award nomination. She was subsequently Oscar-nominated for The Big Chill, The Natural, Fatal Attraction and Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liaisons (for which she was also a BAFTA Award nominee).

Close received her sixth Academy Award nomination in 2012, along with Golden Globe and SAG nominations, for Albert Nobbs. She wrote the screenplay with (Man Booker prize-winning novelist) John Banville. Close was also a producer on the film and composed the lyrics for the Golden Globe and World Soundtrack-nominated song, “Lay Your Head Down.” For Albert Nobbs, she received the Irish Film and Television Award (IFTA) as “Best Foreign Actress,” was voted “Best Actress” at the 2011 Tokyo International Film Festival, and was honored for her performance by the San Sebastian Film Festival (Donostia Award), Hollywood Film Festival, Mill Valley Film Festival and the Palm Springs Film Festival.

Her film credits include Richard Marquand's Jagged Edge, Barbet Schroeder's Reversal of Fortune, Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet, István Szabó's Meeting Venus, Ron Howard's The Paper, Stephen Herek's 101 Dalmatians, Kevin Lima's 102 Dalmatians, Wolfgang Petersen's Air Force One, Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune, Rose Troche's The Safety of Objects, Merchant Ivory's Le Divorce, Chris Terrio's Heights, Rodrigo García's Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her and Nine Lives, Evening, Low Down, 5 to 7, Anesthesia, The Great Gilly Hopkins and Guardians of the Galaxy.

In 2012, Close headlined the fifth and final season of the critically-acclaimed original legal thriller, Damages. For her riveting portrayal of high-stakes

litigator ‘Patty Hewes’, Close won two consecutive Emmys as “Best Actress in a Drama Series” and two subsequent Emmy nominations, along with a Golden Globe Award and three SAG Award nominations.

Close’s twelve Golden Globe nominations include a Best Actress win for Andrei Konchalovsky's adaptation of The Lion in Winter (which also earned her a SAG Award). Among the television projects that have brought her twelve Emmy nominations, is an Emmy Award for her performance as Margarethe Cammermeyer in Serving in Silence: the Margarethe Cammermeyer Story (for which she also received a Peabody Award as executive producer).

Other television credits include The Shield, The Elephant Man, Something About Amelia, Stones for Ibarra, The Ballad of Lucy Whipple and In the Gloaming, for which she won a CableACE Award. She executive produced and starred in Richard Pearce's musical remake of South Pacific for ABC TV. She also executive produced the Sarah, Plain and Tall trilogy for the Hallmark Hall of Fame, starring in all three opposite Christopher Walken.

Close made her theatre, and Broadway, debut in Harold Prince's revival of Love for Love. Her theater credits include The Crucifer of Blood, The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs (Obie Award), Barnum (Tony nomination) and Tony Awards for her performances in The Real Thing and Death and the Maiden, both directed by Mike Nichols. In London, she reteamed with the director of the original Sunset Boulevard stage production, Trevor Nunn, in his Royal National Theatre revival of A Streetcar Named Desire. She returned to Broadway for the 2014 revival production of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance.

In 2009, Glenn Close co-founded Bring Change 2 Mind, a charity dedicated to confronting, head-on, the stigma and discrimination associated with mental illness by empowering people to start the conversation. The idea for the organization came about following Close’s first-hand observation of battles with mental illness within her family. For more information, please visit www.Bringchange2mind.org.

Close actively supports Puppies Behind Bars and their program Dog Tags: Service Dogs for Those Who’ve Served Us. Close is a Founding Member of the Panthera Conservation Advisory Committee. Panthera is an international nonprofit whose sole mission is conservation of the world’s 36 species of wild cats. She is a trustee emeritus of The Sundance Institute, having served as a board member for 16 years.

WILLEM DAFOE

In 1979, Willem Dafoe was given a small role in Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate from which he was fired. His first feature role came shortly after in Kathryn Bigelow's The Loveless. From there, he has gone on to perform in over 100 films - in Hollywood (John Carter, Spider-Man, The English Patient, Finding Nemo, Once Upon A Time In Mexico, Clear And Present Danger, White Sands, Mississippi Burning, Streets Of Fire, American Dreamz), independent U.S. cinema (Out of The Furnace, The Fault in Our Stars, Bad Country, John Wick, The Clearing, Animal Factory, The Boondock Saints, American Psycho), and abroad (Zhang Yimou’s The Great Wall, Theo Angelopoulos’ The Dust Of Time, Yim Ho's Pavilion Of Women, Yurek Bogayevicz's Edges Of The Lord, Wim Wenders' Faraway, So Close, Nobuhiro Suwa's segment of Paris Je t'aime, Brian Gilbert's Tom & Viv, Christian Carion's Farewell, The Spierig Brothers’ Daybreakers, Daniel Nettheim's The Hunter, Anton Corbijn’s A Most Wanted Man and the international box-office hit Mr. Bean's Holiday).

He selects projects based on the diversity of roles and opportunities to work with strong directors. He worked in the films of Wes Anderson (The Life Aquatic, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox), Martin Scorsese (The Aviator, The Last Temptation Of Christ), Spike Lee (Inside Man), Julian Schnabel (Miral, Basquiat), Paul Schrader (Auto Focus, Affliction, Light Sleeper, The Walker, Adam Resurrected, Dog Eat Dog), David Cronenberg (Existenz), Abel Ferrara (Pasolini, 4:44: The Last Day On Earth, Go Go Tales, New Rose Hotel), David Lynch (Wild At Heart), William Friedkin (To Live And Die In LA), Werner Herzog (My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done), Oliver Stone (Born On The Fourth Of July, Platoon), Giada Colagrande (A Woman, Before It Had A Name), and Lars von Trier (Antichrist, Manderlay, and Nymphomaniac I & II).

He was twice nominated for an Academy Award (Platoon and Shadow Of The Vampire) and once for a Golden Globe. Among other nominations and awards, he received an LA Film Critics Award and an Independent Spirit Award.

Upcoming films include Tommy Wirkola’s What Happened to Monday?, Mark Williams’ The Headhunter’s Calling, Sean Baker’s The Florida Project, Adam Wingard’s Death Note, Sir Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express, and the Warner Bros/DC Comics Justice League.

Dafoe is one of the founding members of The Wooster Group, the New York based experimental theatre collective. He created and performed in all of the group's work from 1977 thru 2005, both in the U.S. and internationally. Since then, he worked with Richard Foreman in Idiot Savant at The Public Theatre

(NYC) and most recently two international productions with Robert Wilson: The Life & Death of Marina Abramovic and The Old Woman opposite Mikhail Baryshnikov.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

TOMMY WIRKOLA

Tommy Wirkola was born in 1979 in Alta, northern Norway. “Kill Buljo,” the first film that he co-wrote and directed, premiered in Norway in 2007. A low budget spoof on the "Kill Bill" movies, the film became a Norwegian surprise hit providing Wirkola and his co-producers the funds to start production on the Nazi-zombie movie "Dead Snow", which he also co-wrote and directed. The film premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival quickly becoming a horror cult hit and receiving four Scream Awards nominations the following year.

Wirkola followed that up with the global hit "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters," which he wrote and directed for Paramount Pictures, starring Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton. Released in 2013, the film grossed over $225 Million worldwide. On the heels of "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters," Wirkola returned to his roots co-writing and directing "Dead Snow 2", which premiered in Sundance in 2014. The film received great reviews and won several awards, including the Audience Choice award at Toronto After Dark; the Fantastic Fest Best Picture and Screenplay award in the comedy section; and the Best Director and Screenplay award at South Korea’s PIFAN Film Festival, the world’s largest genre film festival.

In 2015, Wirkola started production on "What Happened to Monday" starring Noomi Rapace, Willem Dafoe and Glenn Close. A futuristic sci-fi film, it will be released in August 2017. Wirkola is currently writing the screenplay for "Irredeemable", an R superhero movie to be directed by Adam McKay. He is also co-writing the pilot for "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters" for Paramount TV and MGM TV.

FILMOGRAPHY Writer Kill Buljo (2007) Dead Snow (2009) Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) Kill Buljo 2 (2013) Dead Snow 2: Red VS Dead (2014) Irredeemable (writing now) Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters pilot (writing now)

Director Kill Buljo (2007) Dead Snow (2009) Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) Dead Snow: Red Vs Dead (2014) What Happened to Monday (2017)

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

RAFFAELLA PRODUCTIONS

With offices in both Los Angeles and Europe, Raffaella Productions benefits from a worldwide reach, producing features and television projects both internationally and domestically, from North America to Asia, and from Europe to Africa. An efficient production company where everyone wears at least two hats, Raffaella De Laurentiis’ tea has perfected economies of scale, allowing full development of projects in-house prior to expanding into production mode. Partnerships with other companies in Canada, China, France, Italy, Germany, Argentina, Romanian, Belgium, Tunisia, Slovakia and the UK, have enabled Raffaella Productions to capitalize on available co-production treaties and maximize production dollars.

The daughter of legendary filmmaker Dino De Laurentiis, Raffaella De Laurentiis has produced films across the globe. Since her first film, Beyond The Reef, where she had to oversee the building of a hotel in Tahiti before the film could be produced, De Laurentiis has risen to the challenge of working in exotic locales with emerging film communities. From China to Africa, from Mexico to Eastern Europe, De Laurentiis’ films include: Conan The Barbarian and its sequel Conan The Destroyer (launching the acting career of Arnold Schwarzenegger), David Lynch’s Dune, Tai-Pan (the first American film to be made in China), The Last Legion, and The Forbidden Kingdom (which brought together legendary martial artists Jackie Chan and Jet Li for the first time). In her capacity as studio executive, De Laurentiis supervised numerous films such as Weeds, Crimes Of The Heart and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Two of her films, Dragonheart and Prancer, have become multiple-sequel franchises.

Currently in post-production with What Happened to Monday, the Vendome Pictures and Raffaella Productions sci-fi thriller fully financed by SND to be released in 2017 and the DVD/VOD release, Dragonheart: Battle for the Heartfire, Raffaella Productions’ upcoming projects include The Medusa, a feature film with Jesse Eisenberg and Pierce Brosnan to be directed by Peter Webber slated to start production this Summer.

Television producing credits include the critically acclaimed 2001 NBC miniseries Uprising and the action-packed Vanishing Son series. The company just optioned the best-selling books series, The Seven Sisters, by British writer Lucinda Riley, which is currently in development for television. De Laurentiis' executive producing credits include Ron Howard’s Backdraft, and the groundbreaking VFX film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

VENDÔME PRODUCTION

Vendôme Production (Paris) was founded by Philippe Rousselet in 2011, after he sold Les Films de la Suane (14 films produced).

Vendôme Production has produced a number of films for the French market, the most recent being: The Women on the 6th floor, directed by Philippe Le Guay (3 Million admissions) and starring Fabrice Luchini, Haute Cuisine (One Million admissions) directed by Christian Vincent starring Catherine Frot, and Two is a family (3,3 Million admissions) directed by Hugo Gelin starring Omar Sy.

In 2012, Vendome Production took a majority stake in Jerico, the most recent films produced being La Famille Bélier (7,7 Million admissions), which won three Césars and was nominated for a further nine, Radin (3 Million admissions) directed by Fred Cavayé starring Dany Boon, and the soon to be released Promise at dawn directed by Eric Barbier starring Pierre Niney and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

In 2008, Philippe Rousselet alongside Fabrice Gianfermi, set up the Los Angeles based Vendome Pictures, to develop, finance and produce English language motion pictures with a focus on international driven and commercially viable feature films designed for the global film entertainment marketplace. Rousselet and Gianfermi produced a diverse range of English- speaking films including Lord of War directed by Andrew Niccol and starring Nicolas Cage, Source Code directed by Duncan Jones and starring Jack Gyllenhaal, Larry Crowne directed by and starring Tom Hanks with Julia Roberts, Bastille Day directed by James Watkins starring Idris Elba, and What Happened to Monday, to be released in 2017, directed by Tommy Wirkola starring Noomi Rapace, Glenn Close and Willem Dafoe.