Maisie Williams and Asa Butterfield to Race Against Death for Love in ‘Departures’
Teen love is simply too pure for this compromised world. (In the movies, anyhow. In real life, the love between teens is like a knockoff version of love you’d buy in Chinatown for eight dollars.) Cancer drove Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort apart in The Fault in Our Stars, and in the new film The Space Between Us, the vague atmospheric chemistry of Earth separates Asa Butterfield from his one true love, Britt Robertson. Butterfield’s coming back for seconds at the teen-weepie-romance buffet too, as a new report from Deadline indicates today.
Butterfield will topline the upcoming romance Departures opposite Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams, and you can bet your last box of Kleenex that there will be melodrama. Williams will play Skye, a spunky 19-year-old marking time until her terminal illness finally takes her. She finds new meaning in her life when she meets the timid Calvin (Butterfield), and the two of them embark upon a journey to complete her quirky bucket list. As she gains a new lease on life, he gains some newfound confidence, and though their love cannot last, they leave an indelible impression on one another. Nina Dobrev will also star, though her role has not yet been specified. Basically, it’s your standard Me and Earl and the Dying Girl type scenario, except without the cinephilia or self-awareness.
Journeyman director Peter Hutchings (The Outskirts) will take the helm of this production, shooting from a script written by Fergal Rock, whose name sounds almost identical to Fraggle Rock, which is fun. It does sound frightfully generic, however, hitting all the same manipulative emotional beats as the many similar projects that have come before. Maybe Butterfield, having trod this path before, can bring something new to the proceedings.