Film Fantasy Friday: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Happy Friday, everyone! This week's edition of Trains Hollywood Should Get On Immediately is all about Victorians, boarding schools, and magic! A Great and Terrible Beauty, the first in the Gemma Doyle trilogy by Libba Bray, is a fantasy story set in a girls' school in 1890s Great Britain. The film will feature a fairly large ensemble; here are the core characters:

Gemma Doyle: played by Rachel Hurd-Wood (yep, she's a fave), Gemma is the main protagonist and a new student at Spence Academy for Young Ladies. At first bullied, she finds herself in the midst of the popular girls...and playing with magic.

Felicity Worthington: played by Romola Garai, Felicity is the queen bee of Spence. Fiery and cunning, Felicity leads the pack of girls which at first teases and then accepts Gemma.

Pippa Cross: played by Emmy Rossum, Pippa is the resident beauty. A bit vain and silly, Pippa and Felicity are best friends.

Ann Bradshaw: played by Carey Mulligan, Ann is Gemma's roommate. She is plain and poor, a charity student who is tormented by Pippa and Felicity, but she becomes part of the group at Gemma's behest.

Miss Moore: played by Julianna Margulies, Miss Moore is the art teacher at Spence who tells the girls stories of a group of sorceresses called the Order.

Kartik: played by Dev Patel, Kartik is a member of the Rakshana, a shadowy group of men who are both protectors and rivals of the Order. Gemma and Kartik are attracted to one another, but are separated by race and social mores.

Mrs. Nightwing: played by Emily Watson, Mrs. Nightwing is the stuffy headmistress of Spence.

Circe: played by Natalia Tena, Circe is another name for Sarah Rees-Toome, a member of the Order who was involved in a mysterious fire at Spence twenty years before the story opens.

And that's how Diana casts it! All images taken from Google and Wikipedia.