Any publicity truly is good publicity isn’t it? Despite all the controversy of his film “The Killer Inside Me” at Sundance recently, Michael Winterbottom has now recruited Oscar-nominated actors Colin Firth and Matthew MacFadyen for his Palestine-set political crime thriller, “The Promised Land.”
The picture follows two British officers, one played by Jim Sturgess, as he tries to track down Jewish militant groups who are responsible for terror attacks against British soldiers and Arabs in the lead up to the partition of Palestine in 1948. ScreenDaily says MacFadyen will play the other British police officer trying to end a campaign of violence and get this, Firth will play the leader of an extreme right-wing Jewish group; a charismatic poet named Avraham Stern. That should be a pretty nice change of pace for him.
You’ve got to hand it to Winterbottom though; he’s not even flinching after the Sundance debacle and follows it up with a film about terrorist groups set in the midst of Israeli-Palestine conflict. The pic is currently being represented at the European Film Market by Fortissimo Films, who are partnering with Winterbottom and Andrew Eaton’s Revolution Films to make the movie. Winterbottom also noted that casting was still taking place while he was in town for “The Killer Inside Me” which is screening at the Berlin Film Festival.
Shooting for “The Promised Land” is slated to begin in the late summer and probably won’t see a release until 2011.
