Why Joe Wright Threw Caution to the Winds on ‘Cyrano’ After ‘Woman in the Window’ Left Him Reeling

Joe Wright has style. He’s the kind of sumptuously visual director you either love or hate, which may explain why a Best Director Oscar nomination has eluded him so far, even when his signature period dramas land Oscar nods galore, from literary adaptations “Pride & Prejudice”, “Atonement”, and “Anna Karenina” to Winston Churchill war picture “Darkest Hour”.The British director also takes fliers on movies that occasionally miss the mark, such as Los Angeles homeless drama “The Soloist,” Disney fantasy “Pan,” and Hitchcockian thriller “The Woman in the Window,” a Fox orphan that previewed badly and was sold by Disney to Netflix during the pandemic.The director didn’t waste any time jumping into a new project. He’d nurtured the idea of making a movie of “Cyrano” since 2018, when he went to see his partner Haley Bennett play Roxanne in writer-director Erica Schmidt’s Goodspeed Opera House musical...