Is Wicker based on a book? Olivia Colman's wicker husband didn't start on screen

Wicker isn't based on a book, but it isn't original either. Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson's film, starring Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård, adapts "The Wicker Husband," a short story by British writer Ursula Wills, credited as Ursula Wills-Jones, per the film's Wikipedia page). Black Bear opened it in limited US release on October 23 and expands it nationwide on October 30, the same day it reaches UK cinemas.

The premise sounds like something nobody would invent twice. In a medieval farming town, a reclusive fisherwoman (Colman), shunned for her smell and her refusal to marry, has a husband woven for her out of wicker (Skarsgård), and his devotion throws the whole town into chaos. Peter Dinklage plays the basket weaver, and Elizabeth Debicki plays the tailor's wife.

Where the story came from

Wills found the idea at Melinsey Mill, an old watermill in Cornwall where a basket maker had set up an art trail of wicker sculptures, she told the BBC. One of them was a wicker man fishing in the pond. She was on a camping trip, and she says she had the idea for the story straight away.

From there, the timeline is long:

• 2006: Wills writes the story after a holiday in Cornwall, drafting most of it in a notebook at the campsite and finishing it on her laptop at home.
• 2008: She posts it on the short story site East of the Web, where it makes the top-ten list. Over the years, readers use it for projects and translations without asking her or paying her, she wrote on her Substack.
• 2011–2020: Actor Rhys Jennings proposes a stage version, composer Darren Clark joins in 2013, and the musical opens at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury in March 2020. It runs for four days before theatres close, and returns in March 2022.
• 2021: Justin Lothrop of Votiv Productions asks whether the film rights are available. Wills meets Fischer and Wilson by video call that September.

Colman signed on in May 2023. Dev Patel was originally attached to play the husband before Skarsgård replaced him.

For most of its life, "The Wicker Husband" was a free story on a website that people adapted without asking. Its next adaptation has an Oscar winner in the lead.

What the film changed

Wills says the directors' script kept the dark core of her story but went further with it than the family-friendly stage version. The musical called the heroine "the Ugly Girl," per the British Theatre Guide's review. The film makes her a fisherwoman the town can smell coming, and it gives her a husband who looks like Alexander Skarsgård.

Don't miss: Wicker end credits, explained: whether Alexander Skarsgård's wicker husband gets one last scene

Fischer and Wilson refused to fake that part. They had Wētā Workshop build a wicker suit fitted to Skarsgård's movements and expressions, because, as Fischer told TheWrap, a romance with Colman opposite "a CG guy with tennis balls" would have been weird, per Backstage. The film premiered at Sundance on January 24, 2026, and Black Bear picked up North American rights the next month.

Reviews have been warm. Wicker is Certified Fresh at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, though not everyone bought the joke for the full 105 minutes.

"The narrative drags and circles around variations of the same old joke."

— Wael Khairy, Scene Now, via Rotten Tomatoes

If you want the original before the film, there's a catch. Wills's own site says the story isn't currently available, though an audiobook and ebook are coming soon. The ending she wrote grew out of the blackthorn she saw on Cornish coastal walks, which she describes as "indestructible, spiny, and unbending." The willow husband was never going to be the hard part.

Previously we wrote: 'The dog had as much on screen time': why The Odyssey isn't campaigning Zendaya for an Oscar