Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the scripts behind awards season’s most talked-about movies continues with Small Things Like These, Cillian Murphy’s first film after winning the Oscar for his starring role in Christopher Nolan’s Best Picture-winning Oppenheimer.
Enda Walsh, the Tony Award-winning Irish playwright and director, adapted the script for the film from Claire Keegan’s 2021 Booker Prize-nominated novel, which was selected as a final Oprah’s Book Club Pick in 2024. The book itself might seem short at 128 pages, but the story is rich within the context of the silent complicity of Ireland in the 1980s.
The film, directed by Tim Mielants, opened in the U.S. on November 8 after it world premiered earlier in the year as the opening-night film at the Berlin Film Festival. Emily Watson, who plays a formidable nun, won the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Actress at the festival. Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairley and Zara Devlin also star.
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Murphy, who also produced the project, stars as coal merchant Bill Furlong, who makes a disturbing discovery that a local convent is keeping sinister secrets. He also reckons with his own truths in the small Irish town controlled by the Catholic Church where the movie is set.
Small Things Like These is the first feature production from Murphy’s recently minted Big Things Films banner, which he runs alongside partner Alan Moloney. Murphy and Moloney have collaborated before; Small Things Like These is their fifth film together. The project was also financed by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s Artists Equity. It was released in the UK and Ireland via Lionsgate and alongside Roadside Attractions in the U.S.
“The book and the film have this kind of quite unusual, quite radical structure in that the story only starts when the book ends, when the film ends, you know what I mean? Because, like, what the hell happens when we go to black? What happens after that?” Murphy told Deadline in an interview about the film. “And I think everyone’s gonna have a different point of view. Everyone’s gonna have a different perspective. Some people will be optimistic, some people will be pessimistic, but it should keep people engaged well after the credits have rolled, and I love stories like that.”
Check out the script below.
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