James Marsh is surely amongst Englands most gifted and underrated directors; a series of highly accomplished pieces in both documentary and fictional film-making spread across a series of disparate subject-matters and genre. Having made the Oscar winning documentary Man on Wire in 2008, most recently Marsh enjoyed considerable acclaim at Sundance for his documentary about a chimp taught to behave like a human from birth entitled
Project Nim, but is now
set to return to the world of fiction film with an adaptation of
Tom Bradby novel
Shadow Dancer, with
Clive Owen in the lead role. Bradbys 1998 novel is set in Northern Ireland during the peace process and concerns the life of a former IRA member turned MI5 informant and the consequences for her and her brothers. In addition to Owen who is currently busy filming HBO movie
Hemingway and Gellhorn- Marsh has assembled a talented cast including
Andrea Riseborough (Never Let Me Go),
Aiden Gillen (The Wire, Queer as Folk) as well as iconic X-Files heroin,
Gillian Anderson. Marsh is plainly enthusiastic about his first dramatic feature since the low-budget (and massively underrated) Gael Garcia Bernal drama The King, even if he isnt entirely convinced about keeping the title of Bradbys book:
"It's much more like Red Riding, it's a genre film, it's a thriller. It's very exciting to be doing something like that now, to have that kind of canvas to fill."
It's low-budget film, it's not a Hollywood movie by any means;
"it's sort of between titles right now. I don't think it's quite the right title- it sounds a bit like Billy Elliot or something like that!"
The project is set to begin shooting in Dublin in May with a view to a 2012 release (a possible premiere at Sundance- being Marshs traditional root- is rumoured). Marshs Project Nim, meanwhile, will be shown on HBO in the US with a limited UK release rumoured for July.