5. Geoffrey Rush As Ian Fleming
Okay, so Sky have just done a mini-series about the Bond-writer in his early days, but Geoffrey Rush holds far too many similarities to an older Fleming - similarities that just can't be ignored. As a result, this idea might be a little way outside the box, but consider it regardless. Center the story around the point in Fleming's life at which his James Bond character is set to make the transition to the big screen, circa 1961. It opens as Fleming wakes up in an interrogation room, face to face with two hardened detectives who accuse him of being a communist spy - his work supplying the methods of world domination by a real-life villain in Soviet Russia. Make it a chamber drama by using just the one location and a minimal cast and you've got a tongue-in-cheek thriller where the author becomes the villain of his own work. Yes, its almost exactly the same story as Martin McDonagh's (In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths) play 'The Pillowman' and there's certainly elements of Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible' in there, too, but employ a little black comedy (ideally penned and directed by McDonagh himself) and focus in on the over-arching question of how much truth is being told and you've got an interesting and intense piece of cinema.