The mounds turned out to be the remains of a 1,400-year-old Anglo-Saxon burial site. But how much of Pretty’s story is true? What happened at Sutton Hoo and was it really as dramatic as the Netflix drama?

Years later, after reportedly cycling through actors including Cate Blanchett and then Nicole Kidman, The Dig found its star in Carey Mulligan, who plays Edith Pretty. “As the ship is revealed, so are the inner lives of the people involved, and that’s what seemed so powerful and original to me.” Wood wanted the film to further explore these hidden character tensions, the “simmering feelings kept in check by British reserve and the class structure.”

What Wood saw was a trove of dramatic character relationships. She immediately wanted to turn the story into a film and soon sent the story to screenwriters. Producer Ellie Wood had then finished John Preston’s historical novel, The Dig, a semi-fictional work (which, at the time, had yet to be released) expanding on the real 1939 archeological excavation at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, England. Simon Stone’s The Dig, now on Netflix, starring Carrey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes, began its source material excavation in 2006.

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