Winslet to star in Branagh romance - 'Potato Pie Society' to shoot in March

Variety - Jan. 13, 2012

By Adam Dawtrey

Kate Winslet is attached to star in "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society," which Kenneth Branagh will direct for Fox 2000.This reunites Winslet and Branagh for the first time since she played Ophelia in his bigscreen "Hamlet" in 1996.
"The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society" is adapted by Don Roos from the bestseller by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.
It's a love story set in London and the Channel Islands after WWII. Winslet will play a magazine columnist who enters into a correspondence with a man from Guernsey, and learns how the islanders used a book group during the war as cover to outwit their German occupiers.
Captivated by their stories and how the books came to influence their lives, she decides to visit Guernsey, a journey that changes her forever.
In a recent interview with Variety, Branagh described the project as "a beautiful romance, very touching and uplifting."
The project is being produced by Paula Mazur and Mitchell Kaplan, with Branagh's regular partner David Barron. Shooting is scheduled for March, according to the Daily Mail.

The book was published in the U.S. in 2008. It was the first and only novel by Mary Ann Shaffer, an editor and librarian, whose niece Annie Burrows helped her finish it when Shaffer became terminally ill. Shaffer died, age 74, a few months before the novel was published.