Hope Gap

This summer - if nothing goes wrong - I'll be filming HOPE GAP, directing from my own screenplay. It's based on my play THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW, which ran on Broadway some years ago with Eileen Atkins, John Lithgow and Ben Chaplin, and was Tony-nominated. I've developed the script extensively for the film version, which will be played by Annette Bening, Bill Nighy and Josh O'Connor. The story is small-scale - pretty much just the mother, the father, and the grown-up son - but it should be extremely emotionally powerful. I like to think of it as a mid-point between 'Brief Encounter' and 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' - not as sentimental as the former, nor as bitter as the latter. But I should be so lucky as to come close to either.

I'm still pinching myself that I've been able to get my dream cast. With such actors I feel I can't go wrong. I haven't directed since 'Firelight', nearly twenty years ago, a film I've always been proud of, but my experience of the distribution process (managed by Harvey Weinstein) was so bad that it's taken me till now to return to directing. I loved shooting it and editing it. I hated all that followed.

This time will be different. I have my old friend David Thompson as producer, and together we're putting together a fine team. We shoot from late June to mid-August. The finished result will be out some time next year.