Mysteries surrounding Argyle, Taylor Swift and Ellie Conway solved

the internet went crazy argyle, an upcoming spy movie and the unpublished Ellie Conway novel on which it is based. The identity of the author is a far more fascinating mystery than the novel itself. Is Ellie Conway really Taylor Swift?

The problem is, Ellie Conway doesn’t seem to exist. She appears in the trailer as a character played by Bryce Dallas Howard (who is suspected to be Swiftian). argyle, but there’s no trace of her in real life except for an almost comical-looking fake profile on Twitter and Instagram. Clearly someone decided to make it seem like Ellie Conway was a real person – and they wanted to get away with writing some fun writing, even though she’s not even a world-famous superstar. So why do that (as people on the internet are demanding) as a hobby?

Let me share with you my own less flashy, more mundane theory. What we’re dealing with here seems to be at worst a good old movie tie-in novel with a clever marketing plan, and at best a fun metafictional game in the spirit of: princess bride.

Let’s take a look at the details.

What’s the big mystery here?

argyle The director of this movie is kingsman, Henry Cavill, Ariana DeBose, Bryan Cranston, Dua Lipa, and Bryce Dallas Howard star as Ellie Conway herself. It comes with a hefty price tag. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Apple paid $200 million for the deal. However, no one has reported whether Apple paid for the movie rights to the book, only that the movie is based on the book.

In this film, author Conway is the central character, a writer thrust into the all-too-realistic world of her own spy novel. As Vaughn said, happy sad confused October Podcast “I love the idea of ​​what would happen if JK Rowling met a real wizard.”

Vaughn explained on the podcast: argyle The film is based on the as-yet-unwritten fourth volume of Conway’s Argyle series. [writer Jason] Fuchs, and we just came up with this. ” Vaughn went on to explain that “Volume 4, on which the film is based, was the perfect work.”Mr. Lucas started wisely. Star Wars If it’s Episode 4, why don’t we do it?”

The problem is that the first three books haven’t even been published yet. Only the first volume has been written so far, and it was released in February of this year. Vaughan seems to be hinting here that he saw the description of the planned later volumes and thought that a fourth volume would suit his purposes.

For a first-time writer, landing a $200 million movie deal with this kind of star power would be a huge deal. But as reporters tried to track down Conway, she proved elusive. She had very little presence on the internet. When The Hollywood Reporter first went looking for Conway in September, the only thing connected to her was an empty Instagram account with nine followers, one of whom was a Bryce Dallas Howard fan account. Ta.

In December, Conway started using an Instagram account. “How do you annoy an introvert?” she wrote in one of her early posts. “I told her she had to publish her first novel, get Matthew Vaughn to buy her film rights, and then start using social media for her ‘publicity.’ Ta.”

“There’s something fishy about it,” an anonymous Hollywood producer who had worked with Bourne told the New York Post in January.

How did Taylor Swift get involved in this case?

In the trailer for Vaughn’s film, Ellie Conway, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, has what can only be described as a Swiftian aesthetic.

Howard’s wavy red hair is reminiscent of the red wig Swift wore for her role as a writer. All Too Well: Short FilmHer large, comfortable cardigan is exactly what you would associate with a “cardigan.” But for many Swifties, it was the cat that was decisive. In the trailer, Ellie carries her cat around in a specially designed backpack with a window, exactly like the one Swift wears in the Netflix documentary. miss americana. Additionally, Ellie’s cat is a Scottish Fold, a breed with the same squishy face as Swift’s two famous kittens. For some Swift fans, the coincidence was too much to bear.

“I’m sorry to say this, but Swifty’s erogenous zones are truly covered,” Ringer staff writer Nora Princiotti told the Washington Post.

One Swift fan wrote on Conway’s Instagram: “I would die if this wasn’t TS and just some random writer.”

Swift is famously one of the hardest-working women in show business, but it takes a fair amount of intentionality to imagine that she found time to write while in the midst of a record-breaking world tour. You have to have a sense of disbelief. Plot details of her one book in the Mystery Her series and all its sequels. Nevertheless, creating a mystery attracts mystery-minded people. Swifties are some of our most passionate detectives.

in a recent interview graham norton showHoward acknowledged the similarities between his character and Swift, but also denied that Swift had anything to do with the film.

“You can’t pretend she was involved,” Howard said. “Actually, she’s been a great inspiration in many ways. She’s a cat lady. She has a great backpack with a cat in it. [it] She walks around with it. She loves a good argyle sweater and has a certain unapologetically goofy side to her. It’s a bit like my personality. ”

Who really wrote that book?

argyle Unlike the movie, there are no metafictional elements in this book. This is a simple spy novel, almost certainly written by British thriller writer Tammy Cohen.

Washington Post reporter Sophia Nguyen stopped by here. In her acknowledgments for her argyle, Conway is grateful to British astronomer Robert Massey for explaining the star map. Ms. Nguyen called Massey, who told her that she was a “novelist writing spy thrillers who had a contract with Penguin Random House,” but that her name wasn’t Ellie Conway. She said no. It was Tammy Cohen.

Tammy Cohen has remained silent on whether she is Ellie Conway. Nevertheless, she fits the profile. She has written multiple mid-list spy novels. argylevery recently when she was bad (2016) and They All Fall Down (2017). Conway is said to be from upstate New York, but argyle Cohen is British. She even has a connection to Vaughn. Her agent, Felicity Blunt, is married to Stanley Tucci, who starred in the Bourne movies. kingsman.

It appears that Mr. Cohen does not own a Scottish Fold cat. But Mr. Vaughn does. He told Vanity Fair that he used his daughter’s pet cat in the shoot because the cat he hired as a professional actor “wasn’t working.”In addition argyle The novel is copyrighted by Marv Quinn Holdings Limited, a company registered by Vaughan and his wife.

Here’s what happened to me: Matthew Vaughn wanted to make a metafictional spy movie that gently poked fun at the spy tropes he’d used in previous films. He decided that his book should be the story of a spy novelist who realized that it was more accurate than he imagined, and he came up with the character Ellie Conway to serve that purpose. As a cute movie tie-in, Vaughn or someone at his studio decided to publish a version of the book that Ellie Conway is writing in the movie, so Vaughn researched his Hollywood connections and made sure to I found a career thriller writer who can put together a body of work. A midlist spy novel. Cohen fit the bill perfectly.

Why keep the real thing? argyle Is the author’s identity a secret?

If I’m correct, this won’t be the first time a fictional author has published a book.

You can purchase mysteries written by Richard Castle. castleand Jessica Fletcher Murder She Wrote. You can purchase romance novels by Mia Thermopolis. princess diary. You can buy Ant-Man’s memoirs.

But in those cases, no one pretended that Richard Castle et al were real people. Although the name on the book’s cover was that of a fictional character, the publisher revealed that the book itself was ghostwritten by a real person.

So why is Vaughn so reserved? argyle?

I think the best analog to reference here is the original novel version of . princess bride. The book was written before the movie, written by the great screenwriter William Goldman as a loving homage and satire to the adventure novels he grew up reading.

As part of the story of princess bride, Goldman developed a witty frame story.truth princess brideHe informed his readers in a long preface that it was a great 19th century novel by the immortal Florine author S. Morgenstern. (You will notice that Florin is not a real country.) princess bride Also, according to Goldman, the film was indescribably boring. Hundreds of pages of arcane social commentary and political satire were periodically interspersed with brilliant chapters of romance and adventure.

To save us all from the way he destroys Morgenstern’s lofty tales, Goldman concludes, he cuts the whole thing to size, and whenever one of the cuts affects the plot, it serves the text. Annotated. He gave us pure stories, only good ones.

The entire content was so compelling that readers often walk away convinced that there is more to it that hasn’t been summarized. princess bride That you can find it if you try hard enough. Goldman was able to realize what any writer dreams of. It’s about making the world he creates feel so real that it’s still believable after you close the book. That’s part of what made this book magical.

I think Vaughan is aiming for something similar here. He makes the film’s frame story true and lifts one of the characters from the screen into the real world.He didn’t say anything to the person who wrote it. argyle Because admitting that Ellie Conway isn’t real means killing the magic.

At the very least, Ellie Conway’s trick is a perfect ruse in an age of endless access to Hollywood intellectual property.

“this [Argylle the movie] It’s not based on any IP that I’m aware of,” said host Josh Horowitz. happy sad confusedwhen I interviewed Vaughn in October.

“Define IP,” Vaughn shot back.

At the moment, movies that aren’t based on existing originals are sitting idle at the box office. If you want to improve upon the changes made to the original film, what better option than to manufacture your own IP for it from scratch? If you are, all the better.

Updated January 26th at 11:45am ET: This article was originally published on January 23 and has been updated with words from Bryce Dallas Howard.