HADRIAN biopic. You know, he built that wall!

By Matt Holmes / June 25, 2011

Does it really take $50-$60 million to make a movie based on the guy who built Hadrian's Wall? Are you actually attempting to rebuild the thing as well, jeez. Variety say Handmade Films have agreed to finance John Boorman's (Deliverance, Point Blank) long time passion project Hadrian, a biopic based on the Roman Emperor who built that very famous wall which separated England and Scotland and is still left standing. Though it's more of a footpath or stack of stones more than anything else. I once had a school trip there YEARS ago and seriously, it was like just any other wall. I'm sure it was impressive back in it's day, but man it is nothing spectacular right now.

Appropriately, Rome based Olympus Films will co-produce. Handmade own the rights to the 1951 novel Memoirs of Hadrian by French author Marguerite Yourcenar of which it is believed this project will mostly be based on, with Boorman currently casting the lead role. The script was written by him and his co-writer on Excalibur. Principal photography is set to start next spring in Morocco, Rome and Spain.

"The project says so much about the nature of empire, leadership and human aspiration," Boorman told Daily Variety. "The time of Hadrian marked both the height of the Roman empire and the beginning of its decline. It's the irony of his rule."

For the amount of money you are putting into it, you better make this epic!