Author's camping trip inspired Hollywood film Wicker

An author who was inspired to write a short story after seeing wicker sculptures on a camping trip has said she never imagined it would become a raunchy A-list feature film.

Ursula Wills from Stroud, in Gloucestershire, had just returned from a holiday in Cornwall in 2006 when she wrote The Wicker Husband, which follows an ostracised fisherwoman who pays a basket-maker to weave her a husband.

The story was picked up by writers who "livened it up" for the big screen to become Wicker, starring Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård and Peter Dinklage.

Wills called it a "unique and amazing" film that she thinks "audiences are going to go crazy for".

The author, who completed a Master of Arts degree at Bath Spa University in 2004, and spent 19 years living in Bristol, drew inspiration for the 14-page story on a camping trip.

"I'd visited this place called Melinsey Mill, which is an old watermill, where a basket maker had created an art trail around the pond, with big wicker sculptures like a stag, a giant spider, and a wicker man fishing, and I thought what would anyone want a wicker man for?" she said.

"I had the idea for the story straight away."

Wills posted The Wicker Husband on a short story website called East of the Web.

After racking up interest from readers, she was contacted by actor Rhys Jennings who, alongside Olivier Award–winning composer Darren Clark, created a musical.

In March 2020, it opened at Watermill Theatre in Newbury, but after only four nights the theatre had to close because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

A year later, she was approached by producer Justin Lothrop who asked her for film rights.

"I had a meeting with writers and directors, but after Olivia Colman came onboard in 2023 things rolled out really fast," Wills said.

"By the end of 2024 I was out in Budapest where the film was being shot.

"When I read the script, I thought it was going to be good, and when I saw it being shot in Hungary I knew it - the end result is something unique and amazing.

"I think audiences are going to go crazy for it."

Wicker, which opens in UK cinemas on 30 October and has been described as a raunchy fantasy rom-com, has garnered lots of attention online and spawned countless viral posts.

Although Wills has said the finished film remains faithful to her original short story, the intimate relationship between the fisherwoman and her wicker husband has been embellished to "liven it up".

Joint writer-directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson said they "loved it immediately".

"It was very sort of sparsely written, but just had these beautiful little clues throughout that suggested to us what the tone of the film could become," they explained.

"We realised this was more than a period fable. We immediately saw a satirical comedy about sex and marriage, a unique visual spectacle, and a strange love story that would ground it all."

The UK premiere for the film was held earlier this month at the British Film Institute in London.

For Wills it was not all glamourous.

"I had to scuttle away from the afterparty at 21:45 to get the train back to Swindon and then I had to get a rail replacement bus to Stroud," she said.

Wills now has a literary agent, and has a new collection of 13 short stories coming out across the world in April.

However, she explained the journey of The Wicker Husband was not over yet.

"I wouldn't have predicted that it was going to be a full film with an A-list cast, but I did think that it would find a home somewhere," she said.

"It's got legs and it's not finished walking yet".

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