ATONEMENT STARTS PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPY
June 19th 2006. Working Title Films is delighted to announce the start of principal photography on ATONEMENT, directed by Joe Wright, starring Keira Knightley, James McAvoy and Romola Garai. Christopher Hampton has written the screenplay adapted from Ian McEwan's best selling novel. The producers are Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Paul Webster. The film's executive producers are Richard Eyre, Robert Fox, Debra Hayward and Liza Chasin.
Critically acclaimed and award winning actresses Brenda Blethyn, who played Mrs Bennet in Pride & Prejudice, and Academy Award winner Vanessa Redgrave also star. The supporting cast includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Patrick Kennedy, Juno Temple, Peter Wight, Daniel Mays and Nonso Anozie.
Tim Bevan and Paul Webster commented, “We are thrilled to be collaborating with Joe Wright again in bringing Ian McEwan's extraordinary novel to the big screen. With Christopher Hampton's beautiful script our peerless cast and crew will create a classic British romance."
ATONEMENT is set during the summer of 1935, Dunkirk in 1940 and London in 1999. Alongside Knightley, McAvoy and Garai will be newcomer Saoirse Ronan, playing the pivotal role of the fledgling young writer 13 year old Briony Tallis, who dramatically changes the course of all their lives when she accuses her sister’s lover of a crime he did not commit.
Shooting will take place in Shropshire, London, Grimsby and the Teeside town of Redcar which will become Dunkirk in 1940.
Joe Wright has gathered together many of his collaborators from Pride & Prejudice. As well as Keira Knightley and Brenda Blethyn, he has brought back on board production designer Sarah Greenwood, costume designer Jacqueline Durran and editor Paul Tothill. Greenwood and Durran received Academy Award nominations for their contribution to the film. Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey and BAFTA nominated make-up and hair designer Ivana Primorac complete Wright’s technical team.
ATONEMENT will be distributed by Universal Pictures International in all territories outside North America where it will be released by Focus Features.
Keira Knightley, who received an Academy Award nomination for her role as Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice, will next be seen alongside Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom in the much anticipated Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest which she filmed back to back with Pirates of the Caribbean: World’s End. Knightley has recently completed filming on Silk.
James McAvoy, winner of this year’s Orange Rising Star award at the BAFTA’s following his lead role as Mr Tumnus in The Chronicles of Narnia; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe will next be seen in Starter For Ten and The Last King of Scotland. McAvoy has recently completed Becoming Jane, the Jane Austen biopic that also stars Anne Hathaway.
Romola Garai has starred in a number of films including Vanity Fair and Inside I'm Dancing and has an exciting year ahead in which she will be seen in Michael Apted's Amazing Grace, Kenneth Branagh's As You Like It, Woody Allen's Scoop and Francois Ozen's Angel.
Joe Wright received the BAFTA Carl Foreman Award for Most Promising Newcomer for his feature film directorial debut of Pride & Prejudice. Wright had also previously received a BAFTA TV Award for his acclaimed TV miniseries Charles II: The Power & The Passion.
Christopher Hampton has received numerous plaudits and awards for his screenplay work which includes Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liaisons and Carrington which he also directed.
Ian McEwan's works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. ATONEMENT received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). McEwan has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction three times, winning the award for Amsterdam in 1998.
Paul Webster produced Pride & Prejudice for Working Title Films in 2004 as well as forming Kudos Pictures with Stephen Garrett and Jane Featherstone. Webster was Head of Production for Miramax Films, where he supervised many films, starting with the 1996 Best Picture Oscar winner The English Patient and concluding with Oscar winners Good Will Hunting and Shakespeare In Love. In 1998 he joined Channel 4 television and created FilmFour Ltd, which was involved in the production of over 50 films and numerous shorts in its five years of existence, garnering over 100 international awards and six Oscar nominations, highlights included Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries and Kevin Macdonald’s Touching the Void.
Webster has produced or executive produced over 29 films to date and has been associated with films that have won over 100 awards including 3 winners of the BAFTA for Best British Film and 6 Oscar nominated pictures.
Working Title Films has been co-chaired by Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner since 1992. Between them, the pair has produced 80 feature films which have amassed more than $3.5 billion worldwide. The company’s commercial and critical hits include The Interpreter, About a Boy; Notting Hill; Elizabeth; Fargo; Dead Man Walking; Bean; High Fidelity; Johnny English; Billy Elliot; Four Weddings and a Funeral; Bridget Jones’s Diary; Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason; O Brother, Where Art Thou?; Love Actually; Shaun Of The Dead; Pride & Prejudice; Nanny McPhee; and United 93, and the company has stepped into theatre production with the hugely popular Billy Elliot The Musical. Forthcoming releases are; Paul Weiland’s Sixty Six; Phillip Noyce’s Catch A Fire; Ringan Ledwidge’s Gone; and Joe Carnahan’s Smokin’ Aces.
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