20/03/2006

Working Title has two new titles in the making, using much the same creative team as their previous successful films. Golden Age, which will start shooting next month, is a follow-up to the 1998 hit Elizabeth, once again starring Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush under the direction of Indian director Shekhar Kapur.

The second project will reunite the key names behind Pride & Prejudice [+see also:
trailer
film profile]: producer Paul Webster, director Joe Wright and actress Keira Knightley, in an adaptation of Ian Mc Ewan’s best-seller Atonement, set to start rolling in June.

Golden Age will pick up the story 15 years on from the events of Elizabeth and visit the Virgin Queen in the middle of her reign. Described by Working Title co-founder Tim Bevan as a “historic thriller”, it will be set against the backdrop of the religious fanaticism of the late 16th century.

Australian actress Blanchett, who won a Golden Globe for her stunning performance as Elizabeth I, will reprise her role alongside her fellow countryman Geoffrey Rush, who will once again play Sir Francis Walsingham. The Queen’s love interest in the first film, Robert Dudley (Joseph Fiennes), will be replaced in Golden Age by Sir Walter Raleigh, played by Clive Owen. Samantha Morton will join the cast as Mary Stuart. The film, produced by Jonathan Cavendish for Working Title, will be shot at London’s Shepperton Studios and on location in Cambridge and Ely.

Atonement, based on the eponymous 2003 novel by Ian McEwan, is set in England in the 1930s and 40s. It is a story of love, war, class, secrets, guilt and forgiveness, in which the central character, Briony Tallis, a privileged young girl with an overactive imagination, wreaks havoc for her older sister Cecilia and her lover, and irrevocably changes the course of their lives. Knightley, who was nominated for an Oscar in Pride & Prejudice, will play the adult Briony.