Amelia Granger

Amelia Granger is a development executive at Working Title. Development is a department in which they come up with ideas for the films they want to make, and these can come in many forms; spontaneous ideas from writers, directors, articles about interesting people, if they read a good book, classic or modern.
They then have to track down the copyright owner of the film in order to obtain the rights to replicate it, and find screen writers and directors.
Anna Karenina was developed in a relatively short amount of time; it had been talked about for years by the development team but upon looking for a third film to add to the two previous films they had created with Joe Wright (Atonement and Pride & Prejudice) they decided on adapting Leo Tolstoy's novel. It was easy for them to set about developing the film - due to the fact the author had been dead for more than 70 years, it was out of copyright.
It was felt that there was room for a more modern adaptation of the film, as all the others had been made years before. They sent writer Tom Stoppard a copy of the book and within 8 weeks they had a script, which went through very little script development due to the prowess of the writer, according to Granger.

Amelia mentioned how the film had been cast to attract a certain audience, and in the case of Anna Karenina, the audience were an up market, literary audience (presumably in the AB social grade). Actors and actresses were drafted in to help to appeal to this audience; for instance Keira Knightley and Jude Law have both been in powerful, period, British dramas before. These well-known actors also allowed them to actors with less prowess, for instance Domnhall Gleeson who played Levin.