A stupendously popular source novel. A theme song by Taylor Swift. Reese Witherspoon as producer. And even a tantalizing, life-imitates-art news headline surfacing recently.
Clearly, few movies open with as much going for them as “Where the Crawdads Sing,” directed by Olivia Newman from Delia Owens’ story of an abandoned girl who grows up alone in the North Carolina marshes and finds herself accused of murder.
The coastal marshlands of North Carolina take on a mythic quality in Delia Owens’ “Where the Crawdads Sing.” They are where the protagonist, Kya, grows up alone after her family leaves. They are also both the source of her artistic inspiration and her social isolation from the people in the nearby town of Barkley Cove.
Good things seem to happen to Daisy Edgar-Jones while she’s busy doing something else. Her breakout role as Marianne in the popular Hulu miniseries “Normal People" came about while she was on another production.