Marc Forster came on to direct White Bird shortly after writer Mark Bomback submitted his first draft. “Marc and I had never met before, though it turned out we had some mutual friends, and I was frankly a bit nervous – as a screenwriter, you’re always concerned that the director might not have the same film in their head as you do. But good luck just seemed to follow this project, as Marc and I couldn’t have been in better sync creatively,” says Bomback.
From the critically-acclaimed, beloved graphic novel White Bird: A Wonder Story by R.J. Palacio, a best-selling book that sparked a movement to “choose kind,” comes the inspirational next chapter. This fictional film is the creative companion piece drawn from the universe of the Lionsgate’s 2017 box office hit Wonder.
For millions of readers and moviegoers, Wonder is the captivating, inspiring, and uplifting story of the power of kindness – how it can build bridges and change hearts. In White Bird, kindness even has the power to save lives, as Julian Albans, the bully who left Beecher Prep, is visited by his Grandmère from Paris and is transformed by her remarkable story of compassion and courage. As a girl in Nazi-occupied France during WWII, the young Grandmère goes into hiding with the help of a schoolmate, a young man who risks everything to give her the chance to survive. Together, they find beauty and love in the secret world of their own creation.
From Marc Forster, director of Finding Neverland and Christopher Robin, White Bird – just like its predecessor Wonder – is an emotional story about the ways that even in the most harrowing circumstances, empathy for others can make every difference in the world.
Mark Bomback (War for the Planet of the Apes) adapted Palacio’s novel for the screen and Mandeville Films’ David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman, who previously produced Wonder, are producing White Bird along with Palacio. “David and I established a fantastic relationship with the author R.J. Palacio. She had mentioned this graphic novel White Bird to us and eventually showed us some of the artwork on it as she was constructing it. When Lionsgate also got excited about the opportunity and eventually read the book, we all knew we had to make it,” says Todd Lieberman.
Forster recalls, “I read the script during the first phase of Covid, and it had really gotten to me because it’s the first time that I really understood emotionally what it means to not be able to leave a place and to be under lockdown.” Says Forster.
After producer David Hoberman read the script, he says, “There was something about the story that I really responded to. It was heartfelt and dealt with humanity and themes of kindness.”
In White Bird, we follow Julian (Bryce Gheisar), who has struggled to belong ever since he was expelled from his former school for his treatment of Auggie Pullman. To transform his life, Julian’s grandmother (Helen Mirren) finally reveals to Julian her own story of courage — during her youth in Nazi-occupied France, a boy shelters her from mortal danger. They find first love in a stunning, magical world of their own creation, while the boy’s mother (Gillian Anderson) risks everything to keep her safe.
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Elaborating on his creative process, Forster offers, “we like to choose stories that have the ability to raise consciousness in the world and Wonder definitely did that.” As the graphic novel White Bird also offered Forster and Wolfe a similar opportunity, albeit on an even wider spectrum, they became deeply interested in further exploring Julian Albans’ redemptive journey and bringing it to the screen.
Renée Wolfe, Forster’s partner in 2DUX2, who serves as executive producer as does Mandeville Films’ Alexander Young, believes that Forster’s inherent sense of empathy makes him the ideal director of a movie like White Bird. “There’s a quiet stillness about him as a human being but he’s watching and he’s listening and he’s observing. And how he takes that and translates it into a moving image and allows these still, magical spaces of the story to exist and unfold is something that this movie needed,” she says.
Producer David Hoberman chimes in saying that “He’s really gifted yet collaborative. That’s a rare thing in our business. It’s a great combination when someone is as talented as Marc, but also wants to hear what you are thinking and if you have ideas. It was a great collaboration that became a great friendship.” Producer Todd Lieberman says, “Making an entire movie about kindness and strength of values, we needed someone like Marc to set the tone for everyone and luckily he was the perfect partner.”
Upon reassembling their core creative team on site, Forster and Wolfe immediately embarked upon discussions with director of photography Matthias Königswieser, production designer Jennifer Williams and costume designer Jenny Beavan regarding how the texture, look and feel of this story could be serviced by their work to illuminate character and story. “Good, thoughtful storytelling is about how you create a space that a character can inhabit naturally and how that space speaks to character. How do the costumes speak to character? How does the way that we shoot this and frame it and conceive of it spatially all speak to character? These are artistic conversations that we all spend months discussing and debating.” elaborates Wolfe.
As recounted by Grandmère (Academy Award winner Helen Mirren, Best Actress, The Queen, 2006) to her troubled grandson Julian (Bryce Gheisar, here reprising his role from Wonder), her own idyllic, pre-war life as a young girl is shattered by the Nazi occupation of her village in Vichy France, and a boy she and her classmates once shunned becomes her savior and best friend.
Mirren elaborates on Julian’s predicament: “as many young teenagers do, he’s going through a difficult time when he can’t quite find his place in the world and he’s lashing out as a reaction to that.”
Adds Gheisar, “Julian in this film has changed in many ways since Wonder. He’s realized that what he did was wrong, but he doesn’t really understand why.” By sharing her extraordinary tale of survival and her memories of the harrowing times she experienced at exactly his age, she hopes to help him understand that the world is a complicated and, sometimes, dark place. “But as Martin Luther King says, you have to find the light within yourself. Darkness will never drive out darkness. So that is the lesson that she is trying to teach him, simply through telling him her life story.”
Ariella Glaser (Radioactive) takes on the role of Sara Blum, the young Grandmère as a child, while Orlando Schwerdt (True History of the Kelly Gang) is Julien “Tourteau” Beaumier, the classmate who, along with his parents, hides Sara at great personal risk.
“The movie is called White Bird, and when I saw Ariella for the first time, I saw there’s such a delicacy, such a gentleness. But at the same time, she’s very strong,” recalls Forster. He also saw the young actress as smart, capable and, possessing all of the traits necessary to authentically portray the multi-layered character of Sara.
For Glaser, White Bird communicates the same messages of kindness and compassion as Wonder, and it’s Julian in the modern day who carries them forth. Recalling early conversations with Forster, she says “we talked about it being almost like a redemption story because at the end he chooses the right path.” Schwerdt, having first read Wonder at age seven, touts himself as “an immediate R.J. Palacio fan” and “was just so thrilled to have the opportunity to bring the beautiful character of Julien to life – a character that I really, really loved in the Wonder universe.”
Two-time Emmy® Award winner Gillian Anderson (including Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, The X-Files, 1997)steps into the role of Julien’s mother Vivienne Beaumier and British thespian Jo Stone-Fewings embodies Julien’s father Jean Paul Beaumier. Anderson’s first read of Bomback’s script resonated deeply with her. “I feel like, on the one hand, we’ve seen aspects of this story before in terms of the German occupation of France, and also the impact that that can have on communities for decades to come, but there’s something about the impact it has on these individuals and the choices that they make and the degree of compassion and kindness that they extend to each other, and at the risk of their own lives.”
Stone-Fewings finds the story particularly resonant at this particular crux in history “because this is about isolation, which is something that we’re all experiencing at the moment.” He adds, “As much as it’s a film about empathy, and fortitude, it’s also about how do you live with yourself in isolation? Forster once heard tell of a Holocaust survivor who would instinctively wonder upon making a new acquaintance, ‘would this person have been kind-hearted enough to hide me?’ And in a sense, White Bird: A Wonder Story begs a similar question of each of us: ‘would we have been courageous enough to lend a hand?’”
Anderson describes the broader themes that thread throughout White Bird as “incredibly timely and indeed necessary for us as human beings to continue to be able to show up in our lives and extend ourselves toward communities and to the people that we care about and to those in need. It’s one thing for people to even take on the idea of sheltering a refugee even though the act of doing that today would not mean a certain death. That is still something that people struggle with: extending themselves, opening up an extra bedroom or an extra room, it’s a big ask. But to do that under the threat of death as well is a concept none of us can really, at least in this country, comprehend.”
And Mirren hopes to see “audiences take away a sense of hope, a sense of belief in humanity. At the same time, a recognition of the dangers of certain kinds of attitudes and behavior. But most of all, hope.”
With a versatile range of credits to his name, Director MARC FORSTER has evaded categorization, having helmed a slate of films of varying scale and genres for studios and independents alike, starring many of the industry’s premier talent.
Forster’s recent films include the box-office hits, A Man Called Otto starring Academy Award winner Tom Hanks for Sony Pictures and Walt Disney Studio’s, the live-action feature Christopher Robin starring Ewan McGregor (Star Wars franchise) as the title character.
Forster’s past projects include the Paramount tent pole hit World War Z, produced by and starring Brad Pitt; and the 22nd James Bond franchise installment Quantum of Solace, starring Daniel Craig for Columbia Pictures; and the visually driven obsessive love story All I See Is You, directed from his original screenplay with Blake Lively (Café Society) and Jason Clarke (Zero Dark Thirty) starring.
Forster is also co-founder and co-CEO of 2Dux2 an artist driven transmedia content company created to develop and produce all forms of storytelling across multiple platforms. Forster’s long-time collaborator and partner in this endeavor is co-founder and co-CEO, Renèe Wolfe. The Company’s credits include, World War Z, Hand of God, All I See Is You and Christopher Robin.
Forster’s versatile filmmaking style is reflected throughout his body of work, including the Oscar®-nominated drama Monster’s Ball with Halle Berry who won for Best Actress; and Finding Neverland starring Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, and Dustin Hoffman, which received seven Oscar® nominations, five Golden Globe®nominations, and 11 BAFTA nominations.
Additionally, Forster’s stirring drama The Kite Runner earned an Academy Award® nomination, a Golden Globe® nomination, and two BAFTA nominations; and the imaginative comedy Stranger Than Fiction,starring Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, and Queen Latifah, premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival to critical and audience acclaim, and earned a Golden Globe® nomination for Ferrell.
Born in Germany and raised in Switzerland, Forster came to the United States in 1990 to attend NYU Film School.
Writer/Executive Producer MARK BOMBACK is a highly respected writer and producer with over two decades of experience in the film industry, Mark Bomback continues to captivate audiences with compelling narratives through a fresh and modern lens.
Bomback recently premiered his Apple TV+ limited series, Defending Jacob, for which he is creator, writer and executive producer. Based on the 2012 New York Times best-selling novel, the gripping thriller centers on a Massachusetts attorney whose life is completely altered when his teenage son is charged with murdering a classmate. Starring Chris Evans, Michelle Dockery, and Jaeden Martell, the series began streaming on April 24, 2020.
He is executive producer on The United States Vs. Billie Holiday, which is inspired by the 2015 New York Times best-seller Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. Directed by Lee Daniels, the biopic follows the legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday (Andra Day) throughout her career as she is targeted by the Federal Department of Narcotics with an undercover sting operation led by black Federal Agent Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes), with whom she had a tumultuous affair.
Most recently, Bomback wrote the screenplay for The Art of Racing in the Rain, from executive producer Patrick Dempsey. The Twentieth Century Fox title, which stars Milo Ventimiglia and Amanda Seyfried, was released on August 9, 2019.
In 2014, he wrote and executive produced the global box office smash hit Dawn of the Planet of the Apes for Twentieth Century Fox. Directed by Matt Reeves and starring Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke, Gary Goldman and Keri Russell, the film tells the story of a growing nation of genetically evolved apes who are threatened by a group of human survivors of a devastating virus unleashed a decade earlier. The film’s visual effects were nominated for a plethora of awards including a 2015 Academy Award and BAFTA Award. Following its huge success, Bomback penned and executive produced its sequel, War for the Planet of the Apes, which picks up right after the apes suffer unimaginable losses to the humans. Similar to its prequel, the film garnered awards attention for its stunning visual effects including 2018 Academy Award® and BAFTA nominations. The sequel was released on July 14, 2017.
Bomback was the mastermind behind a variety of popular films, having written screenplays for Tony Scott’s Unstoppable starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pine, David Mackenzie’s Outlaw King also starring Chris Pine, Lionsgate’s Insurgent, the second film in the YA novel-turned-film-series Divergent starring Shailene Woodley and Kate Winslet, James Mangold’s box office hit The Wolverine starring Hugh Jackman, Len Wiseman’s Total Recall, Disney’s Race To Witch Mountain starring Dwayne Johnson, and the 2007 Bruce Willis starrer Live Free Or Die Hard.
He also executive produced Jacob Bricca’s documentary Finding Tatanka, which premiered at the 2014 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.
On the small screen, Bomback served as a consulting producer on TNT’s action series Legends. The series centers on a deep-cover operative (Sean Bean) who has an uncanny ability to transform himself into a different person for each job. In addition to producing the two-season series, Bomback penned the 2014 pilot episode.
In addition to his work in film and television, Bomback co-wrote the 2015 YA novel Mapmaker. Published by Soho Teen, the chilling thriller follows Tanya Barrett who takes an internship at MapOut, a digital mapping company founded by her late father, as she stumbles across a deadly secret and relies on her wits to evade MapOut and her find her friend who has disappeared.
Novelist/Executive Producer R.J. PALACIO is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Wonder, which has sold over 15 million copies worldwide. The book’s message inspired the Choose Kind movement and has been embraced by readers around the world, with the book published in over 50 languages. Wonder was made into a blockbuster movie starring Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, and Jacob Tremblay.
Palacio’s other acclaimed books include 365 Days of Wonder: Mr. Browne’s Book of Precepts, Auggie & Me: Three Wonder Stories, the picture book We’re All Wonders, (and the graphic novel White Bird). Her most recent novel, Pony, was an instant New York Times bestseller and named one of the best books of the year by the Wall Street Journal.
Palacio lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two sons, and two dogs.