VARIETY – Virtual Reality producers Baobab Studios have announced that “Star Wars” actor Daisy Ridley will headline the company’s next VR project, “Baba Yaga,” presenting a Work in Progress panel at this year’s online Annecy Intl. Animation Film Festival.

“It’s easy to get caught up in the spectacle of a ‘Star Wars’ film and not to think about the talent of the actors,” director Eric Darnell told Variety, discussing the pleasure of working with Ridley. “It’s even more remarkable when you know that she is standing in front of a greenscreen in a sound studio. For us, to have the opportunity to work with her was huge. Certainly, she is a big name, but for me, it’s always great when you work with wonderful actors.”

“Often actors earlier in their careers can be quite insecure,” he went on. “Daisy, on the other hand, is centered and confident, and is a collaborator.”

He explained that when early visuals were first shared with Ridley using audio she’d previously recorded, the actor pushed to re-record, insisting she could do better once she had a visual context to work with.

DEADLINE – Star Wars’ Daisy Ridley is in negotiations to star in psychological crime-thriller The Ice Beneath Her, which has been the subject of a bidding war among Hollywood financiers in recent months.STX has come out on top for world rights and will finance the project, which was once at New Line but has shaken loose. Andrew Lazar (American Sniper) is producing and filmmaker trio Radio Silence (Ready Or Not) are attached to direct and produce.

With its unreliable narrator, Swedish author Camilla Grebe’s bestselling 2015 novel is similar in tone to Gone Girl and The Girl On The Train. The story revolves around a detective and psychological profiler who work to solve the case after a young woman is found beheaded in the home of a prominent businessman. The investigation quickly evolves into a race against time.