Sony Pictures today issued the first official image from TriStar and BBC Films feature ‘The Lady In The Van’ showing Dame Maggie Smith in character as the eccentric Miss Shepherd.
The highly anticipated film is a big screen adaptation of writer Alan Bennett’s iconic and celebrated memoir, and is directed by long-standing Bennett collaborator Nicholas Hytner.
The film tells the true story of the relationship between Alan Bennett and the singular Miss Shepherd, a woman of uncertain origins who ‘temporarily’ parked her van in Bennett’s London driveway and proceeded to live there for 15 years. Their unique narrative is by turn funny, poignant and life-affirming.
Sony Pictures announced today that the film will release in cinemas across the UK on November 13, 2015.
The first official picture shows Dame Maggie Smith, star of the Downton Abbey phenomenon, on location in London alongside co-star Alex Jennings (The Queen), who plays Alan Bennett. The movie is being filmed on the very street, and in the actual house, where Bennett lived for all those years. Life imitates art, as Bennett is often present on set watching his life being re-enacted.
The wider cast has also been confirmed and boasts a stellar line up of British acting talent, including Frances de la Tour, Jim Broadbent, Deborah Findlay, Roger Allam and Gwen Taylor.
Nicholas Hytner commented “It is a privilege to bring this extraordinary story to the big screen and to share it with cinema audiences around the world.”
TriStar Productions Chairman Tom Rothman added “I was standing on the street in Camden Town recently, in the rain naturally, watching Maggie Smith, Alex Jennings, Nick Hytner, and Alan Bennett himself, wreak comedic havoc on Alan’s actual house, thinking what a lucky American I was to be in the presence of such royal British talent. All of us at TriStar and Sony are honored to be involved.”
The film is Hytner’s first directorial outing after ending his massively successful decade at the head of the British National Theatre. He and Bennett previously collaborated on the films of Bennett’s The Madness of King George and The History Boys. Kevin Loader (Le Week-end, Venus, In The Loop) and Damian Jones (The Iron Lady, Belle) produce, along with Hytner. Miles Ketley and Charles Moore are serving as executive producers, alongside Christine Langan of BBC Films.
Bennett, a celebrated playwright, screenwriter, actor and author, is considered a national literary treasure in England. Over the course of his more than 50-year career, he has won, or been nominated for, every major writing award that exists in film, television and theatre, including an Academy Award®, multiple BAFTAs, Tonys, and Oliviers.
Hytner, who has made four previous films with TriStar Productions Chairman Tom Rothman, is among the preeminent theatrical creators of his generation, having directed plays that range from Othello to One Man, Two Guvnors. At the National, he commissioned and produced the breakout hits Warhorse, The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night Time, Jerry Springer, The Opera and Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein. In addition to Madness and History Boys, his filmography also includes Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, starring Daniel Day-Lewis. He has won multiple Olivier and Tony Awards, and a BAFTA.
Smith is a two-time Academy Award® winner and has been nominated an additional four times. A longtime superstar in the UK, she is enjoying a popularity surge in America due to the success of Downton Abbey and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
BBC Films is at the forefront of independent filmmaking in the UK, developing and co-producing around eight films a year. Recent releases include box office hit Mrs Brown’s Boys D’Movie, What We Did On Our Holiday from the creators of the hit BBC comedy series ‘Outnumbered’ starring David Tennant, Rosamund Pike and Billy Connolly and Matthew Warchus’ uplifting British comedy drama Pride. Upcoming releases include James Kent’s powerful WW1 memoir Testament of Youth which will be released in January 2015, Richard Bracewell’s Bill for March and Thomas Vinterberg’s Far From The Madding Crowd starring Carey Mulligan in Spring 2015.
The Lady in the Van joins a roster of other high profile go films at the newly revived TriStar that includes Ricki and the Flash, directed by Jonathan Demme, written by Diablo Cody, and starring Meryl Streep, Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk, based on Philippe Petit’s memoirs To Reach the Clouds, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jodie Foster’s Money Monster, starring George Clooney and Ang Lee’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.
