EXCLUSIVE: Filming is expected to start later this year on Mike Leigh’s next project, which will see the acclaimed writer-director reuniting with recent collaborators Cornerstone, Bleecker Street, Studiocanal and UK financier Film4.
Desmar will come on board as an equity financier. Georgina Lowe of Leigh’s production company Thin Man Films will again produce.
Bleecker Street released Leigh’s latest drama Hard Truths nationwide in the U.S. on January 10 after an awards qualifying run on December 6, with Studiocanal releasing in the UK today (January 31). Cornerstone handled international sales and is back aboard ahead of the upcoming European Film Market in Berlin.
As is customary with Leigh, the new film will shoot as Untitled 2025, with plot and casting being kept under wraps.
Hard Truths premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September, and has since won awards for actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste from the critic “trifecta” of New York Film Critics Circle, LA Film Critics Circle and National Society of Film Critics, as well as Best Lead Performance at the British Independent Film Awards, and Best Original Screenplay from the US National Board of Review. The film received BAFTA nominations for Outstanding British Film and Leading Actress but was surprisingly overlooked by the Academy.
The hard-hitting London-set film centers on Jean-Baptiste’s Pansy, a woman wracked by fear, tormented by afflictions and prone to tirades against her husband, son and anyone who looks her way, and her younger sister (Michele Austin, from Leigh’s Another Year), a single mother with a life as different from Pansy’s as their temperaments. As Pansy increasingly nears a her snapping point, the film explores how even through lifetimes of hurt and hardship, families still find ways to love one another.
Leigh is a seven-time Oscar nominee, thirteen-time BAFTA nominee and Cannes Palme d’Or winner.
