Nikolaj Coster-Waldau & Romola Garai To Star in Gothic Horror ‘Virtue’

Game Of Thrones star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Romola Garai (Suffragette, Becoming Elizabeth) are set to star in Joanna Coates’s gothic horror Virtue, which Hanway Films will launch sales on at the EFM later this month.

Set in England in 1350, Coster-Waldau will star as heroic knight St. Peter who returns from war with his teenage son to discover a plague-ravaged homeland riven by social unrest, superstition and fear.

After controversially preventing a woman from being burned to death on the superstition of being a witch, he attempts to re-establish his reputation by embarking on a quest to find a female villager who has vanished into the local forest, believed to be haunted by locals.

But when he and his men track down the woman and her “possessed” daughters, events take an unexpected turn, and it becomes clear they do not want to be rescued.

“The Middle Ages and classic fairy tales present an elemental world that reinforces the patriarchal order with knights in shining armour saving damsels in distress. Virtue takes you on a thrilling and scary ride, subverting this world and challenging the gender and power structures it protects,” said HanWay Films CEO Gabrielle Stewart.

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Coates won the Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature at the Edinburgh Film Festival for her film Hide & Seek in 2014.

Virtue is written by Sam Hoare (Having You, The English Game series, A Gentleman in Moscow series) and produced by Alex Cook for 10 08 Films Ltd and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Steve Bakken and Joe Derrick for Ill Kippers.

Executive producers include HanWay Films, James Brown and Matthew James Wilkinson.

“What drew Ill Kippers and me to Virtue was the combination of a strong original story by Sam Hoare and the chance of getting to work with Joanna Coates,” said Coster-Waldau.

“Virtue will hopefully, first and foremost, be a riveting movie that surprises and excites the audience from the opening scene to the end credits. And if the themes of virtue, honour, family, lust, love, class and fear inspire discussion after the end credits roll, then even better.”