Girl with a Pearl Earring (film)

Girl with a Pearl Earring
UK theatrical release poster
Directed by	Peter Webber
Screenplay by	Olivia Hetreed
Based on	Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
Produced by	Andy Paterson Anand Tucker
Starring	Colin Firth Scarlett Johansson Tom Wilkinson Judy Parfitt Cillian Murphy Essie Davis Joanna Scanlan Alakina Mann
Cinematography	Eduardo Serra
Edited by	Kate Evans
Music by	Alexandre Desplat
Production companies	UK Film Council Archer Street Productions DeLux Productions Inside Track Film Fund Luxembourg Wild Bear Films[1]
Distributed by	Pathé Distribution (United Kingdom) Lions Gate Films (United States)
Release dates	31 August 2003 (2003-08-31) (Telluride) 16 January 2004 (2004-01-16) (United Kingdom) 30 January 2004 (2004-01-30) (United States)
Running time	100 minutes
Countries	United Kingdom United States Luxembourg[2][3]
Language	English
Budget	£10 million
Box office	$31.4 million

Girl with a Pearl Earring is a 2003 drama film directed by Peter Webber from a screenplay by Olivia Hetreed, based on the 1999 novel of the same name by Tracy Chevalier. Scarlett Johansson stars as Griet, a young 17th-century servant in the household of the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (played by Colin Firth) at the time he painted Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665) in the city of Delft in Holland. Other cast members include Tom Wilkinson, Cillian Murphy, Essie Davis, and Judy Parfitt.

Hetreed read the novel before its publication, and her husband's production company convinced Chevalier to sell the film rights. Initially, the production was to feature Kate Hudson as Griet with Mike Newell directing. Hudson withdrew shortly before filming began, however, and the film was placed in hiatus until the hire of Webber, who re-initiated the casting process.

In his feature film debut, Webber sought to avoid employing traditional characteristics of the period film drama.^[4] In a 2003 interview with IGN, he said, "What I was scared of is ending up with something that was like Masterpiece Theatre, [that] very polite Sunday evening BBC kind of thing, and I [was] determined to make something quite different from that ...". Cinematographer Eduardo Serra used distinctive lighting and colour schemes similar to Vermeer's paintings.

Released on 12 December 2003 in North America and on 16 January 2004 in the United Kingdom, Girl with a Pearl Earring earned a worldwide gross of $31.4 million. It garnered a mostly positive critical reception, with critics generally applauding the film's visuals, musical score, and performances while questioning elements of its story. The film was subsequently nominated for ten British Academy Film Awards, three Academy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards.