Powerhouse film-makers Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis are joining forces to make a picture built around the music of The Beatles.
Boyle, who won an Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire, will direct the film which has the tentative title of All You Need Is Love, although London-based studio Working Title has insisted that the secretive project is still untitled.
Curtis, responsible for British classics such as Four Weddings And A Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually, has written the script for All You Need Is Love, which is about a struggling musician who, for plot reasons as yet unknown, thinks he’s the only person who can remember the Fab Four.
Powerhouse film-makers Danny Boyle (left) and Richard Curtis are joining forces to make a picture built around the music of The Beatles. Himesh Patel (right) the actor who played Tamwar Masood for several years on EastEnders, has been cast to play the up-and-coming musician
Boyle, who won an Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire, will direct the film which has the tentative title of All You Need Is Love about the Beatles (pictured)
Himesh Patel, the actor who played Tamwar Masood for several years on EastEnders, has been cast to play the up-and-coming musician. However Mr Patel’s representatives refused to respond to messages. Similarly, Tim Bevan, the producer from Working Title who has developed the musical, was resolute in his determination not to speak about the new project.
I suspect that the reason has to do with complex and sensitive negotiations to acquire various rights to songs from The Beatles catalogue.
Boyle and his casting director have auditioned scores of actors for other roles, but so far Patel is the only one to have been signed. I understand that filming is expected to start later in the spring in locations that will include London and Norfolk.
Boyle has long been interested in directing a movie version of the musical Miss Saigon for Cameron Mackintosh and Working Title. That project is still being developed and may happen in 2020, if a screenplay (that pleases all involved) can be completed, and the right cast found.
Sally brings all the family to see her chance of Oscar glory
Sally Hawkins at this year’s BAFTAs with her father, the actress will attend Sunday night’s ceremony with parents Jacqui and Colin Hawkins (pictured) who are celebrated authors and illustrators of children’s books
The Oscars will be a family affair for Sally Hawkins.
The actress will attend Sunday night’s ceremony with parents Jacqui and Colin Hawkins, who are celebrated authors and illustrators of children’s books (Mig The Superstar Pig and Jen The Hen are just two of their creations).
Sally’s writer brother Finbar Hawkins will also be travelling to Los Angeles for the awards.
Hawkins has been nominated as best actress for her role in director Guillermo del Toro’s film The Shape Of Water, in which she plays a mute janitor who becomes enchanted by a strange aquatic creature: an Amazon river god being held captive at a U.S. research facility.
Sally told me her parents’ love of books allowed her creativity to flourish.
‘It influenced everything. Their world, and building and creating stories, meant everything. The images and the words they created are part of the same thing I do as an actor. You’re creating stories to tell in the same way they did,’ she said.
She cited other authors that her parents introduced her to: Quentin Blake, Maurice Sendak, Roald Dahl. ‘They were so important to me.’
She added: ‘I am only here because of my family and everything that they are. You’re only as good as the people who love you.
‘My brother, too. He’s the smart, bright one! I feel like I’m bumbling along and will soon be found out.’
I remember meeting Jacqui and Colin at the Oscars Governors Ball four years ago, when Hawkins was nominated for her first Academy Award (best supporting actress for her role in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine).
They were so much fun: a down-to-earth antidote to the superstar egos in the room.
The Shape Of Water has been nominated for 13 Oscars, including best picture. However, it faces fierce competition from Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; Dunkirk; Get Out and Lady Bird.
Hawkins’s rivals for best actress include Frances McDormand (Three Billboards), Margot Robbie (I, Tonya), Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird) and Meryl Streep (The Post).
Why my pal Oprah is She Who Must Be Obeyed
Oprah Winfrey arrives for the Premiere Of Disney’s “A Wrinkle In Time” held at the El Capitan Theatre on February 26, 2018 in Los Angeles
When Oprah Winfrey summons you, you do not hesitate. She spotted me at a party for the world premiere of her latest film, A Wrinkle In Time, at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, and bellowed: ‘Baz! Baz! Baz!’
To be honest, she had my attention at Baz.
‘I just wanted everyone in the room to know that I know you,’ she said, with a wicked smile.
The actress and media mogul appears in the fantasy film as Mrs Which, a larger-than-life celestial warrior guardian. ‘She’s here to provide light, to help fight the darkness,’ Winfrey told me.
She said she hopes the snow has gone by the time she reaches London for the film’s European gala (the picture is released here on March 23).
I suggested she bring her fur, just in case. ‘Baz!’ she said witheringly. ‘I don’t wear fur. I wear shearling.’ Humbled, I said I’d carry it for her.
Watch out for
- Stephen Graham, who appears in WWI film Journey’s End, and has now been cast to act alongside Tom Hanks in WWII drama Greyhound. The film, directed by Aaron Schneider and from a script by Hanks, is set aboard a U.S. Navy destroyer that’s escorting a convoy in the Atlantic in 1942. Graham will play the ship’s executive officer. The actor, who starred in the This Is England films, has just finished working on The Irishman, Martin Scorsese’s crime drama for Netflix. It stars Robert de Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci.
- Kate Winslet, who has been reunited in Los Angeles with James Cameron, who famously directed her more than 20 years ago (can that be right?) in Titanic.The actress, in LA shooting Cameron’s Avatar 2 picture, is breathtaking in another film: Wonder Wheel. I do feel she was robbed of an Oscar nomination, because the film’s director Woody Allen has been under so much #MeToo scrutiny.
V for victory – Oldman flies flag at award bash
Gary Oldman is just the chap to fly the flag at the British Consul General’s annual party to celebrate Blighty’s Oscar nominees.
Oldman, whose brilliant portrait of Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour has made him the favourite to carry off the best actor statuette, is one of many being honoured by Michael Howells, Her Majesty’s representative in Los Angeles, and Bafta LA chair Kieran Breen.
There are British nominees in 17 of the 24 Academy Award categories this year. They include actors Daniel Kaluuya, Sally Hawkins, Lesley Manville and Daniel Day-Lewis.
Gary Oldman is just the chap to fly the flag at the British Consul General’s annual party to celebrate Blighty’s Oscar nominees
Jacqueline Durran is up for two costume Oscars for her work on Darkest Hour and Beauty And The Beast.
And production designers Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer are also in the hunt for their work on the same two movies.
Director Chris Nolan is in the running for Dunkirk (some Oscar experts think Dunkirk could be a dark horse winner, but frankly, as a wise screenwriter once said, nobody knows anything).
Martin McDonagh is nominated for original screenplay for the Film4 and Fox Searchlight-backed Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which he also directed and has a best film nomination.
And legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins is up for an Oscar for the 14th time for his visual poetry in Blade Runner 2049. Deakins, amazingly, has never won the Academy Award.
This being a Brit bash, it seems appropriate that rain is expected — though the soggy cucumber sandwiches can always be washed down with a few glugs of Chapel Down sparkling wine or tumblers of Aberlour whisky.
The party is being held at the Consul General’s residence for the first time in a couple of years.
There was inclement weather the last time it was there, too; and I recall female guests being handed little plastic devices to place over their stiletto heels to stop them getting stuck in the lawn. What larks!
Hello, Charlie … Bouncing Brit wows Broadway
Charlie Stemp, 24, sure knows how to wow Broadway, he leaps and cartwheels across the stage of the Shubert Theatre as store salesman Barnaby Tucker in Hello, Dolly!
Charlie Stemp sure knows how to wow Broadway.
The 24-year-old leaps and cartwheels across the stage of the Shubert Theatre as store salesman Barnaby Tucker in Hello, Dolly!
Stemp, whom Cameron Mackintosh cast in Half A Sixpence in Chichester and the Noel Coward Theatre; and who showed off his comic timing in the Dick Whittington panto at the Drury Lane at Christmas; joined the Hello, Dolly! company in January after Bernadette Peters took over the title role from Bette Midler.
He’s the fifth-billed player in the show’s credits, yet it was his name that led the New York Times’s enthusiastic review last week. Critic Jesse Green hailed Stemp as a ‘dimply new star . . . and he’s delightful’.
The praise hasn’t gone to Charlie’s head. When I met him after a show this week he chatted happily with fans waiting by the stage door, and posed for pictures.
Later, at the Bond 45 restaurant, the ladies at a neighbouring table checked him out approvingly, and eavesdropped, ever so politely, on our conversation.
As we were leaving, one told me they were headed straight to the Shubert’s box office to buy tickets to see Stemp.
He told me he’s enjoying working with a Broadway company, and learning a different way of doing things. ‘I’m taking singing lessons, dancing lessons — and acting lessons . . . They all do that here.’
And Jerry Zaks, the show’s veteran director, has been passing on some tips. ‘He said: If they laugh, don’t talk. If they don’t laugh, say it again. He calls me ‘“kid” or “sweetie”. When I called him Mr. Zaks, he responded: “Sweetie, that’s my dad’s name!”’
Zaks and Warren Carlyle, the show’s British choreographer, have expanded the dance and comic possibilities for Stemp, and he has jumped right in and grabbed them — and his performance works brilliantly within the framework set by leading lady Ms Peters.
Charlie’s mother Lianne, a yoga and pilates instructor, has been over to visit. ‘She was excited to see me — and to see Sarah Jessica Parker, who sat just behind her,’ Stemp joked as he ate spaghetti and meatballs.
He called his mother his toughest critic, and biggest cheerleader. ‘So many people blow smoke in this business; but she always tells it as she sees it.’
She also helped him early on in his career, when he got a part in Wicked in London. He’d told the choreographer he could do a back-flip when, in truth, he couldn’t. ‘My mum got me home and taught me how to do them.’
The run in Hello, Dolly! is for 12 months and Charlie intends to enjoy every minute of it. ‘I’m single and I’m in New York. What can I say?’