Mike Leigh To Make Peterloo

Couldn't escape if he wanted to

Fresh from Mr. Turner and a different corner of the 19th century, Mike Leigh is back, back, back with a new film set in a similar timeframe but offering a whole different slate on the period. His new film, just announced, will be Peterloo, a first cinematic telling of Manchester's notorious Peterloo Massacre in 1819, an event writ large in the nation’s social history.

The background to the event sounds like fertile terrain for Leigh, even if it sounds like a story Ken Loach might have had a beady eye on too. Viewing the forces of 19th century reform as seditious, the powers-that-be of the time unleashed a cavalry charge on a peaceful protest in St. Peter’s Field, Manchester, that left 18 people dead and 700 wounded. The result was a further swelling of popular unrest that would contribute to the passing of the Reform Act of 1832, arguably the most important national document since Magna Carta.

"There has never been a feature film about the Peterloo Massacre," says Leigh. "Apart from the universal political significance of this historic event, the story has a particular personal resonance for me, as a native of Manchester and Salford.”

Even for a man who made the sumptuously designed Topsy-Turvy and recreated The Fighting Temeraire’s last voyage (albeit using CGI), that cavalry charge will be a landmark sequence. Hold your metaphorical horses, though, because Leigh won’t get the cameras rolling on this until 2017, tied up as he is with The Pirates Of Penzance at the English National Opera.

Film4 is currently hard at work developing the project, with Leigh’s Thin Man Films partner Georgina Lowe producing and his long-term cinematographer Dick Pope also returning. Head here for Empire’s in-depth chat with the man about Mr. Turner, Naked, liver in lager and much more.

from Empire News