Conville & Walsh

The Hollywood blogs are buzzing this week with the news that Nicole Kidman is set to star in the film adaptation of Dame Daphne Sheldrick’s life.

With a reported budget of $35m, My Wild Life will be directed by Phillip Noyce, and National Geographic nature photographers Dereck and Beverly Joubert will be involved in photographing the film’s elaborate nature sequences. The film is based on the life of Dame Daphne Sheldrick, who has spent her whole life shaping the conservation of elephants in Kenya.

Ever since she helped raise an orphaned antelope at the age of three, Dame Daphne Sheldrick has known what her life’s work would be. Back then, Kenya’s population was 4 million. Now Kenya stands at a crossroads, with its population burgeoning at 40 million, and a relationship with its wildlife more strained than ever. It is the story of a woman who as fought all her life to protect the country’s wildlife for future generations.

Daphne is now writing a memoir of her years in conservation, which will also tell the story of her relationship with her late husband, David Sheldrick, who ran the Tsavo National Park in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and did much of the pioneering research to show that elephants are intelligent, social creatures. Together, they have changed the face of Kenya, and his legacy lives on in the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, the charity through which she continues to keep alive his accomplishments and wisdom.

Filming of My Wild Life is set to begin early next year for a holiday season release in 2012. Her memoir, entitled An African Love Story, will be released in March.