Anna Kendrick Is 'Over the Moon' to Direct 'Evelyn Hugo' for Netflix

Anna Kendrick is "over the moon" about her next directing job. Speaking at the Zurich Film Festival, where she presented the European premiere of Lauren Miller Rogen's "Babies," Kendrick confirmed her enthusiasm for "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo," the Netflix adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid's best-selling novel that she signed on to direct in June.

"Obviously, over the moon and so excited," she said of the project during an hour-long talk. Liz Tigelaar ("Little Fires Everywhere," "Casual") wrote the screenplay, with current revisions by Francesca Sloane ("Mr. & Mrs. Smith," "Atlanta," "Fargo"). Jenkins Reid serves as an executive producer.

Kendrick directed for the first time on the 2023 thriller "Woman of the Hour," and she admitted the transition behind the camera initially terrified her. She recalled being "really in a panic" before stepping onto the set. What steadied her was a long conversation with "Pitch Perfect" co-star Brittany Snow, who had faced the same first-time-director nerves making "Parachute."

"[Snow] is normally so emotionally attuned and sensitive and has all the room in the world for your big feelings," said Kendrick. "She went: 'You're gonna get on set and know what to do, stop it.' It was just so cut and dry and exactly what I needed to hear."

Snow is one of what Kendrick called "10 girls who are family, in the truest sense" from the 2012 comedy, a group that also includes Rebel Wilson, Anna Camp and Hailee Steinfeld. "We didn't choose each other. We didn't ask for it. Now, we'll be in each other's obituaries [laughs]," she said. "It's so lovely to have these people where, if any of us is experiencing something troubling, it's really amazing, and I feel it sounds so corny or like I'm lying, but it's like 'Avengers, assemble,' you know? When someone in the group chat tells us something difficult is happening, it's like, ok: who is going over to her house tomorrow? What are we doing? How are we figuring this out? It's beautiful."

Kendrick also pushed back on the film's reputation. "There's been a kind of revisionist history where people think of it as this sleeper hit and this box-office smash, which it simply was not," she said. "It did fine, but it wouldn't have gotten a sequel off the strength of the box-office numbers." The film, she noted, found a "second life" on HBO in a "pre-streaming" era.

One unexpected byproduct: the studio asked her to record a full-length version of the "Cup Song." "Which, again, I thought: What a waste of money, but sure!" she said. "Cups (Pitch Perfect's 'When I'm Gone')" went viral, logging more than 2.5 million digital downloads, over 600 million combined YouTube views and a No. 6 peak on the Billboard Hot 100. "I don't think anything that bizarre will ever happen to me again," she said. "It was so cool. I got a platinum record to hang in my house, like I'm Snoop Dogg or something!"

The franchise's success gave Kendrick career leverage. "Those movies became so successful that it meant that I could get projects greenlit that probably wouldn't have been greenlit," she said. "I don't think the movie 'Alice, Darling' would have ever been made, or at least it wouldn't have been made with me, if it hadn't been for 'Pitch Perfect.'"

In "Babies," Kendrick reunites with Seth Rogen 15 years after Jonathan Levine's "50/50." The film, directed by Rogen's wife Lauren Miller Rogen and loosely inspired by the couple's own story, follows partners deciding whether to have children. Watching the couple on set gave Kendrick her performance blueprint.

"They just have one of those relationships where you're like, God, they just make it look so easy," she said. "It feels like one of those, you and me against the world relationships; it's just so lovely. It was great to just observe them together on set and go: 'Oh, ok, I have my roadmap for this.'"

Kendrick also referenced Chris Rock's Toronto-favorite "Misty Green," recalling a scene with Rich Sommer and Daniel Kaluuya in which the "Get Out" star went "from zero to 60 in anger." The moment made her realize what she wants to play next. "I'm not usually asked to play rage or anger," she said. "I'm like five-two on a good day, and I'm just not usually asked to play that feeling. I think that would be something scary and interesting to do."