🚨 OLIVIA COLMAN FALLS FOR A HUSBAND MADE ENTIRELY OF WICKER — AND HER BIZARRE NEW ROMANCE MAY BE ONE OF 2026’S WILDEST FILMS

Oscar winner Olivia Colman plays a lonely fisherwoman who asks a basket maker to weave her the perfect husband — only for her impossible romance with Alexander Skarsgård’s wicker creation to ignite jealousy, outrage and chaos across an entire village.

Olivia Colman has played queens, detectives, grieving mothers and deeply complicated women.

But even by the Oscar winner’s famously unpredictable standards, her latest role might be one of the strangest of her career.

In Wicker, Colman plays an ostracised fisherwoman living on the edge of a conservative seaside village where her unmarried status has made her an object of ridicule.

Lonely, frustrated and thoroughly fed up with the people around her, she finally decides to solve the problem herself.

She wants a husband.

There is only one complication.

She doesn’t intend to find one.

She intends to have one made.

The fisherwoman approaches a master basket maker, played by Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage, with an extraordinary commission: weave her the perfect man entirely from wicker.

And somehow, impossibly, he succeeds.

The finished creation — played by Alexander Skarsgård — is not simply a decorative human-shaped basket.

He comes alive.

What follows is a wildly unconventional romance blending fantasy, comedy, sexuality and social satire as the fisherwoman discovers something the village never expected her to possess:

Happiness.

But her neighbours are not prepared to accept it quietly.

Soon the strange new husband is inspiring fascination, jealousy and outrage — and one woman’s attempt to escape loneliness threatens to turn the social order of an entire community upside down.

Wicker premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and is directed by Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer, adapted from Ursula Wills-Jones’ short story The Wicker Husband. Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Peter Dinklage and Elizabeth Debicki lead the cast.

And if the premise sounds too bizarre to work, that appears to be precisely the point.

MEET THE WOMAN THE VILLAGE DOESN’T WANT

Colman’s character isn’t introduced as the glamorous heroine audiences might expect from a romantic fantasy.

Quite the opposite.

She is simply known as the Fisherwoman.

She lives on the outskirts of a seaside village and has spent years being judged by the people around her.

She’s unmarried.

She’s different.

And she refuses to behave the way the community thinks a woman should.

The official synopsis goes even further, describing her as “smelly, single and perpetually ridiculed.”

It is hardly the traditional beginning of a sweeping screen romance.

But beneath the comedy sits something painfully recognisable.

The Fisherwoman is lonely.

More importantly, she is angry at being told that loneliness somehow makes her incomplete.

Everyone around her appears to believe they know what her life should look like.

Eventually she decides she has endured enough.

If the village believes she needs a husband, then she will get one.

Just not in the way anybody expects.

ENTER PETER DINKLAGE — THE MAN WHO CAN BUILD THE IMPOSSIBLE

The Fisherwoman takes her extraordinary request to the local basket maker.

Peter Dinklage plays the craftsman responsible for turning her impossible idea into reality.

She wants him to make her a husband.

Not a sculpture.

Not a mannequin.

A husband.

Made from wicker.

The request would sound absurd in almost any other film.

But Wicker exists somewhere between fairy tale, medieval fantasy and adult social satire, where the impossible can suddenly become perfectly reasonable.

The basket maker accepts.

Wicker is woven.

A body takes shape.

And eventually a man emerges.

Alexander Skarsgård becomes the Fisherwoman’s handmade husband.

Suddenly the woman everyone laughed at is no longer alone.

And the joke the village thought it was making at her expense begins to turn against them.

ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD AS YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN HIM BEFORE

Skarsgård has built a career playing everything from vampires and villains to violent warriors and dangerously charismatic men.

This time, he is playing a romantic lead made from woven material.

The transformation is intentionally extraordinary.

The film’s first trailer revealed Skarsgård inside an elaborate wicker creation designed to make the character feel simultaneously human, artificial and strangely beautiful.

Practical work on the character involved Wētā Workshop, the renowned effects company associated with productions including The Lord of the Rings.

Yet the film apparently does not treat him merely as a visual gag.

That is essential.

For the relationship to work, audiences must eventually stop looking at the Wicker Husband as an object.

The Fisherwoman certainly does.

Their relationship becomes intimate.

Romantic.

Physical.

And increasingly scandalous to the conservative people watching from outside.

YES — THE WICKER HUSBAND IS REALLY HER ROMANTIC PARTNER

The first trailer made it immediately obvious that the filmmakers have no intention of playing the premise cautiously.

This isn’t simply a cute fairy tale about a magical companion.

The Fisherwoman and her handmade husband have an adult romantic relationship.

That includes physical intimacy.

The movie is rated R in the United States for sexual content, language and brief full nudity.

That choice makes the story considerably more provocative.

The villagers are not merely confronting an unusual magical creature.

They are watching a woman they dismissed discover romantic and sexual fulfilment outside the rules their society has established for her.

Suddenly the ridiculous woman at the edge of town possesses something others begin to envy.

And envy is where the trouble starts.

THE PERFECT HUSBAND CREATES AN IMPERFECT DISASTER

At first, the Fisherwoman’s solution seems almost miraculous.

She wanted companionship.

Now she has it.

She wanted affection.

She receives it.

The Wicker Husband appears devoted to her in ways the human men surrounding her may not be.

But the better their relationship becomes, the more uncomfortable the village grows.

Why should she have this?

Why should the woman everyone mocked suddenly be happy?

Why should a creature made from wicker appear more desirable, considerate or emotionally available than the supposedly respectable men around him?

The existence of the Wicker Husband becomes a mirror.

And some people do not like what they see reflected back.

The official synopsis says their unconventional romance sparks “outrage, jealousy and chaos” throughout the conservative community.

What begins as one woman’s eccentric solution to loneliness therefore becomes something much bigger.

The entire village is forced to reconsider its assumptions about marriage.

ELIZABETH DEBICKI JOINS THE CHAOS

The supporting cast makes the film even more intriguing.

Elizabeth Debicki plays the Tailor’s Wife, while Nabhaan Rizwan appears as the Tailor.

Richard E. Grant also appears as the village doctor, with Marli Siu among the ensemble.

These aren’t simply background characters surrounding the central romance.

The arrival of the Wicker Husband disrupts relationships across the village.

The Fisherwoman’s happiness becomes contagious in one sense and dangerously destabilising in another.

People begin questioning their own marriages.

Desires emerge.

Resentments surface.

Jealousies that could previously be hidden become harder to ignore.

The artificial man has inadvertently exposed very real problems.

THE STRANGE PREMISE HIDES A MUCH MORE HUMAN STORY

Strip away the magical husband and Wicker is asking an extremely familiar question:

Who gets to decide what a successful relationship looks like?

The villagers believe they already know.

There are accepted marriages.

Accepted roles.

Accepted ways for women and men to behave.

The Fisherwoman has failed to fit comfortably into any of them.

Her solution is ridiculous on the surface.

But once the Wicker Husband comes alive, the joke begins working in the opposite direction.

If a man woven from wicker can provide affection, kindness and companionship, what does that say about the human relationships surrounding him?

Suddenly the impossible romance seems less ridiculous than the supposedly normal marriages.

That is where Wicker becomes more than a fantasy comedy.

It becomes satire.

OLIVIA COLMAN WASN’T JUST THE STAR

Colman’s involvement goes beyond playing the central character.

She is also among the film’s producers.

The British Council lists Colman alongside Ed Sinclair, Tom Carver, David Michôd, Brad Zimmerman and others among the producing team.

That suggests the project was not simply another eccentric acting job she accepted.

She helped bring it to the screen.

And it is easy to understand why the material might appeal to her.

Colman’s best performances often occupy uncomfortable territory between comedy and pain.

She can make audiences laugh at a character and then suddenly expose something deeply sad underneath.

The Fisherwoman seems designed for exactly that ability.

She is ridiculous to the villagers.

But the film does not necessarily agree with them.

Behind her strange request is someone tired of being humiliated.

Someone tired of being alone.

Someone tired of waiting for permission to live differently.

FROM A SHORT STORY TO AN ADULT FAIRY TALE

Wicker is adapted from Ursula Wills-Jones’ short story The Wicker Husband.

Wilson and Fischer wrote and directed the film, expanding its fairy-tale premise into a feature-length story.

Sundance described the result as an allegorical adult fairy tale set in a fictional medieval village filled with folklore and magic.

That description is useful because the movie does not appear interested in explaining the Wicker Husband through science.

This isn’t a robot story.

It isn’t about artificial intelligence.

Nobody is assembling circuitry beneath the woven exterior.

The logic is closer to folklore.

A wish is made.

A strange craftsman fulfils it.

Something impossible comes alive.

And the people who wished for change discover that magic has consequences.

WHY THE VILLAGE’S JEALOUSY MATTERS

The most interesting conflict may not be whether the Wicker Husband is truly alive.

The movie accepts that fantasy.

The important question is what his existence does to everyone else.

The Fisherwoman has been positioned at the bottom of her community’s social hierarchy.

She is mocked.

Dismissed.

Viewed as undesirable.

Then the Wicker Husband arrives and changes the equation.

Suddenly she has a partner who commands attention.

People become curious.

Then jealous.

The same community that once laughed because nobody wanted her begins resenting her because she now has something they want.

That hypocrisy gives the story its sharper edge.

The villagers were comfortable with the Fisherwoman when she was miserable.

Her happiness is what becomes threatening.

ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD’S MOST UNUSUAL ROMANTIC ROLE?

Even Skarsgård has acknowledged how unusual the assignment was.

Recent coverage surrounding the trailer has highlighted the challenge of playing a fundamentally good and unusually pure character while wearing the elaborate wicker design.

That reverses many of the expectations surrounding the actor.

Skarsgård often brings an undercurrent of danger to his roles.

Here, the danger may not come from him at all.

It comes from the humans reacting to him.

The woven outsider becomes the emotionally straightforward character.

The supposedly civilised villagers become unpredictable.

That reversal fits perfectly with the film’s fairy-tale structure.

The monster may look strange.

But appearances tell us very little about who is behaving monstrously.

THE FILM ALREADY MADE A SPLASH AT SUNDANCE

Wicker had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2026.

Sundance’s own coverage described the screening as a sold-out premiere and presented the film as a comedic fable examining marriage and social norms through an intentionally fantastical world.

That festival launch immediately established the film as one of the year’s more unusual star-driven projects.

It is not difficult to understand the curiosity.

Olivia Colman.

Alexander Skarsgård.

Peter Dinklage.

Elizabeth Debicki.

A magical wicker husband.

Those ingredients alone make the movie difficult to confuse with anything else being released this year.

BUT IT ISN’T STREAMING ON NETFLIX RIGHT NOW

Despite social-media posts describing the film as a new Netflix release, current release information tells a different story.

As of August 27, Wicker is still awaiting its theatrical release.

Black Bear is distributing the film, and current listings put its limited theatrical opening on October 23, 2026, followed by a wider release on October 30.

Current streaming listings also do not show the movie as available on Netflix.

That distinction matters because the unusual premise is already eye-catching enough without presenting the film as something viewers can stream immediately.

The real story is arguably more interesting:

One of Olivia Colman’s strangest films is still on its way.

WHY WICKER COULD BECOME ONE OF THE YEAR’S BIGGEST CURIOSITIES

There are films whose appeal can be explained in one sentence.

Then there is Wicker.

It sounds like somebody combined a medieval fairy tale, an adult romantic comedy, a social satire and an art-house fantasy.

Perhaps that is precisely why it stands out.

Modern audiences have watched countless stories about lonely people searching for love.

Few involve ordering a husband from a basket maker.

Yet beneath that absurdity lies something surprisingly universal.

Loneliness hurts.

Social rejection hurts.

Watching other people decide what your life should look like hurts.

The Fisherwoman responds to those pressures by doing something impossible.

She creates an alternative.

And once that alternative succeeds, everybody who dismissed her suddenly has a problem.

THE REAL TWIST MAY BE WHO THE ‘NORMAL’ PEOPLE ARE

The premise encourages audiences to assume the wicker man will be the strangest character.

He is, after all, a walking human being made from woven material.

But the deeper the story goes, the more that assumption appears to shift.

The Wicker Husband may be physically unnatural.

His devotion might not be.

The Fisherwoman’s romance may violate every convention in her village.

But that does not automatically make it unhealthy.

Meanwhile, jealousy spreads among the supposedly normal couples surrounding them.

Respectable marriages reveal cracks.

Desire turns disruptive.

People begin behaving badly.

The magical creature may ultimately expose something the villagers were desperate not to acknowledge:

Their perfectly conventional society was never particularly perfect.

ONE WOMAN WANTED LOVE — AND ACCIDENTALLY THREATENED AN ENTIRE VILLAGE

That is the irresistible contradiction at the heart of Wicker.

The Fisherwoman does not begin with ambitions to start a revolution.

She isn’t trying to overthrow the village.

She isn’t attempting to prove a philosophical point.

She is lonely.

She wants a husband.

So she asks somebody to make one.

Then the impossible happens.

The husband comes alive.

He loves her.

She loves him.

And suddenly everyone else begins losing their minds.

The villagers who mocked her become jealous.

Relationships are tested.

Social expectations start collapsing.

And the ridiculous romance at the centre of the story begins exposing very serious truths about the people surrounding it.

For Olivia Colman, it is another opportunity to inhabit the kind of character she plays exceptionally well: funny, vulnerable, rebellious and far more complicated than she initially appears.

For Alexander Skarsgård, it may be his strangest romantic transformation yet.

And for audiences, Wicker offers a premise almost impossible to forget.

A lonely fisherwoman.

A basket maker.

A handmade husband.

And an entire village discovering that the most threatening thing a social outcast can do isn’t rebel.

It’s become happier than everyone who rejected her.

Wicker is currently scheduled to begin its U.S. theatrical rollout in October 2026.