Anthony Hopkins, who has embodied a solid of real-life characters in his lengthy profession, starting from Richard Nixon (in Nixon) and Sigmund Freund (Freud’s Final Session) to Alfred Hitchcock (Hitchcock), and Adolf Hitler (1981 TV film The Bunker), is about to play composer George Frideric Handel within the upcoming characteristic The King of Covent Backyard.
Minamata filmmaker Andrew Levitas is hooked up to direct the biopic targeted on how the German-British Baroque composer created his 1741 masterpiece Messiah. Tim Slover wrote the screenplay. Dan Lupovitz and Kevan Van Thompson will produce.
Opera star Katherine Jenkins is hooked up as an govt producer on the venture and can be concerned as a musical advisor on the venture in addition to serving to with future advertising efforts. Peter Touche (Navy Wives, The Son) can be govt producing.
Embankment Movies is dealing with world pre-sales on The King of Covent Backyard and can be pitching it to patrons on the Cannes Movie Market later this month. The pitch: “a powerfully majestic celebration of genius breaking all the principles to create an anthem inspiring the favored creativeness of worldwide audiences.” The movie is eying a late fall 2025 launch.
Embankment additionally dealt with worldwide gross sales on Hopkins’ The Father, which earned the Welsh actor his second finest actor Oscar. His first, after all, got here for taking part in Hannibal Lecter in 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs.
In a press release, Levitas mentioned the movie’s story will hinge upon “an unlikely pair, who meet one another at their lowest factors, and collectively create a powerful never-heard-before ‘sound for the folks’: the groundbreaking masterpiece Messiah, the annual world bestseller for near 300 years.” He mentioned Slover’s script “is populated by passionate, real-life expertise in all its colour and grime, making a riveting human story with shocking up to date relevancy, common human connectivity and religious uplift.”
Hopkins is represented by UTA and Mitch Smelkinson at Goodman, Genow, Schenkman, Smelkinson and Christopher.