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PRODUCTION UK

Boorman restarts Hadrian project

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Revered British director John Boorman is all set to restart his dream project Memoirs of Hadrian. HandMade Films will be fully financing the £30m film. Italian company Olympus Films will serve as co-producers on the project.

The film is based on French writer Marguerite Yourcenar’s bestselling eponymous 1951 novel. The book is in the form of a long letter by the Roman emperor Hadrian to his successor Marcus Aurelius, where he talks about his military victories, music, philosophy and his lover, the Greek boy Antinous, who later drowned in the Nile.

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Hadrian is best known in the UK for building Hadrian’s Wall, which separated Scotland and England. Boorman said, “Hadrian was a real visionary. We will be telling an intimate story and a broad, epic story. He managed to consolidate the empire, but in doing so he sowed the seeds of its ruin. His armies began to soften.”

The project was due to roll in 2005, but then fell through. The revival is timed to coincide with the ongoing British Museum Hadrian exhibition Empire and Conflict. Boorman researched the project with the exhibition’s curators Neil McGregor and Thorsten Opper and co-wrote the script with Ron Base, Valerio Manfredi and Rospo Pallenberg. Boorman has previously collaborated with Pallenberg on Excalibur and The Emerald Forest.

Boorman is currently casting the film with Handmade’s Patrick Meehan and Olympus’ Enzo Peri. It is conjectured that Antonio Banderas will play Hadrian while Charlie Hunnam will play Antinous.

Boorman was Oscar and BAFTA nominated for Hope and Glory and has won Best Director at Cannes twice – for Leo the Last and The General. The film is set for a spring 2009 shoot in Morocco, Spain and Rome.

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