According to the Daily Mail, Hunter is keen to play London, which she deems less "brutal" than Broadway. And she is reportedly in negotiations to star in the Irish playwright Marina Carr's The Bog of Cats, a re-vamped version of Medea which Hunter starred in at the San Jose Repertory Theatre two years ago. Negotiations have reportedly started. Sonia Friedman is named as possible producer, with an Autumn 2004 opening night the target. Friedman has established herself in recent years as the leading importer of American names to the West End - from Madonna to Matthew Perry.
Her restrained, poignant performance in the movie "The Piano" established Hunter as a front-rank movie actress, and affixed the words `"Oscar winner" to her name. It remains to be seen whether she can transmit her peculiar brand of big-screen intensity to the wider-focus of a comparatively cavernous London theatre.
Hunter's last New York stage appearance was in Beth Henley's Impossible Marriage in 1998.