Clemence Poesy the Harry Potter star, has been picked to play Richard II’s Queen in an epic film based on Shakespeare’s historical play about the battle for the English crown.
Ben Whishaw, who performed a landmark Hamlet for Trevor Nunn at the Old Vic, will play the monarch who believes he has the divine right to be King.
Clemence, who has appeared in Harry Potter films as Fleur Delacour and who will be seen again in that role in the final Potter screen instalment The Deathly Hallows 2, is in the final stages of negotiations to play Isabella, Richard’s French-born Queen.
Director Rupert Goold, making his first major film, will shoot the BBC TV project in June and July.
Goold made a screen version of Macbeth with Patrick Stewart, based on the production he directed at Chichester, and then in the West End and on Broadway, but that was very much a play that was filmed.
His Richard II, though, will be opened out and shot like a proper movie. The drama will boast scale and grandeur. To that end, Andrew McAlpine, who designed An Education and Made In Dagenham, has been contracted as production designer and he, along with Goold and producers Ben Stephenson and Rupert Ryle-Hodges for the BBC, and Sam Mendes and Pippa Harris for Neal Street Productions, are considering using locations such as St David’s Cathedral in Pembrokeshire and Ely Cathedral in Cambridge.
Rory Kinnear, who received a best actor nomination for his acclaimed Hamlet at the National Theatre, has been chosen to play the ambitious aristocratic warrior Bolingbroke, who ruthlessly seizes the throne from Richard.
Kinnear’s on tour with Hamlet in Luxembourg tonight and the production, directed by Nicholas Hytner, returns to the National — this time to the Lyttelton — for a short final run from April 12.
Whishaw, a brilliant Shakepearean thespian, comes directly from shooting another BBC drama, The Hour, set in the world of Fifties TV, with Dominic West and Romola Garai.
Clemence, by the way, has made several films here and in Europe. The best, though, was Martin McDonagh’s delicious black comedy In Bruges with Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes.
The BBC will also make films for BBC2 about Richard II’s successors, Henry IV — Parts 1 and 2 — and Henry V.
Richard Eyre will direct the Henry IV films, with Simon Russell Beale, an associate producer of all four pictures, as the larger-than-life Jack Falstaff.
sourceBen Whishaw, who performed a landmark Hamlet for Trevor Nunn at the Old Vic, will play the monarch who believes he has the divine right to be King.
Clemence, who has appeared in Harry Potter films as Fleur Delacour and who will be seen again in that role in the final Potter screen instalment The Deathly Hallows 2, is in the final stages of negotiations to play Isabella, Richard’s French-born Queen.
Director Rupert Goold, making his first major film, will shoot the BBC TV project in June and July.
Goold made a screen version of Macbeth with Patrick Stewart, based on the production he directed at Chichester, and then in the West End and on Broadway, but that was very much a play that was filmed.
His Richard II, though, will be opened out and shot like a proper movie. The drama will boast scale and grandeur. To that end, Andrew McAlpine, who designed An Education and Made In Dagenham, has been contracted as production designer and he, along with Goold and producers Ben Stephenson and Rupert Ryle-Hodges for the BBC, and Sam Mendes and Pippa Harris for Neal Street Productions, are considering using locations such as St David’s Cathedral in Pembrokeshire and Ely Cathedral in Cambridge.
Rory Kinnear, who received a best actor nomination for his acclaimed Hamlet at the National Theatre, has been chosen to play the ambitious aristocratic warrior Bolingbroke, who ruthlessly seizes the throne from Richard.
Kinnear’s on tour with Hamlet in Luxembourg tonight and the production, directed by Nicholas Hytner, returns to the National — this time to the Lyttelton — for a short final run from April 12.
Whishaw, a brilliant Shakepearean thespian, comes directly from shooting another BBC drama, The Hour, set in the world of Fifties TV, with Dominic West and Romola Garai.
Clemence, by the way, has made several films here and in Europe. The best, though, was Martin McDonagh’s delicious black comedy In Bruges with Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes.
The BBC will also make films for BBC2 about Richard II’s successors, Henry IV — Parts 1 and 2 — and Henry V.
Richard Eyre will direct the Henry IV films, with Simon Russell Beale, an associate producer of all four pictures, as the larger-than-life Jack Falstaff.
