Ellen Page already has her next project lined up. She’ll play real-life US Marine Lance Corporal Leslie Martz, in producer James Dahl’s developing war drama Lioness (not to be confused with the English women’s football team).
Martz was stationed in Iraq for a time, but Lioness is concerned with her stint in Afghanistan, leading a ‘Female Engagement Team’. Her agenda was ostensibly to gain the trust of Afghan women and prepare them for independence, but Martz was also tasked with surreptitiously extracting intelligence from those same women about their Taliban husbands.
The soldier, who now lives in San Diego, was also waging a personal war on several fronts. She was hiding the fact that she was a gay woman in the military, and on top of that found herself torn between the desire to prove herself and her superiors and the allegiance she developed toward the women and children whose strength and courage she grew to admire.
Lioness doesn’t have a director yet, but newcomer Rosalind Ross has written the screenplay and will join Dahl on the producers list. Dahl is also behind the Rolling Stones movie The End Of The Tour, starring Page’s To Rome With Love co-star Jesse Eisenberg.
Page has two films set for release – the sci-fi drama Into The Forest and the biohraphical romance Freeheld, although neither currently has a release date.