From a Cornwall campsite to a 14-page story
Ursula Wills, who lives in Stroud, Gloucestershire, came up with the idea for The Wicker Husband shortly after a holiday in Cornwall in 2006. During a camping trip she visited Melinsey Mill, an old watermill where a basket maker had laid out an art trail around a pond, featuring large woven figures including a stag, an enormous spider and a wicker man holding a fishing rod. Wills recalled wondering what purpose anyone would have for such a figure, and said the concept for the tale arrived at once.[S1]
The resulting story runs to 14 pages and centres on a fisherwoman cast out by her community, who pays a basket-maker to create a husband for her. Wills, who earned a Master of Arts degree at Bath Spa University in 2004 and lived in Bristol for 19 years, published the piece on East of the Web, a website devoted to short fiction. Readers responded strongly enough that the story began to attract wider attention.[S1]
A musical, a pandemic shutdown and a producer's call
Among those who took an interest was the actor Rhys Jennings, who worked with Darren Clark, a composer and Olivier Award winner, to turn the story into a musical. That production opened at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury in March 2020, but the venue was forced to shut after just four nights as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold. Roughly a year later, the producer Justin Lothrop approached Wills to ask about acquiring the film rights.[S1]
Wills held meetings with writers and directors, and the project gathered speed once Olivia Colman joined in 2023. By the close of 2024, Wills was in Budapest, where shooting was under way. Reading the screenplay had left her optimistic, she said, and watching the scenes filmed in Hungary confirmed her view that the finished work was distinctive and impressive. She predicted that audiences would respond to it with great enthusiasm.[S1]
What the screenwriters saw in the tale
Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, who share writing and directing credits on the film, said the story won them over on first reading. They described the prose as spare but studded with small, telling details that pointed towards the mood the adaptation might adopt. In their view the material went beyond a period fable: they detected a satirical comedy about sex and marriage, a striking visual spectacle and an unusual love story capable of anchoring the whole.[S1]
Wills has said the film stays true to her original narrative, though the intimacy between the fisherwoman and her woven spouse was expanded to give the screen version more energy. The UK premiere took place earlier this month at the British Film Institute in London. The evening brought its own practicalities: Wills left the afterparty at 21:45 to catch a train to Swindon, then continued to Stroud on a rail replacement bus.[S1]
What comes next for the author
Wills now has a literary agent, and a fresh collection of 13 short stories is due to be published around the world in April. She said she had not foreseen a full feature with a major cast, though she had always believed the story would eventually find a home somewhere. In her assessment, the tale retains momentum and has not yet finished its journey.[S1]
