Ooooh ... while it won't be screening at the AFM, HanWay Films will be shopping their new Brit sci-fi project Franklyn by writer-director Gerald McMorrow. McMorrow is a first time feature director who got his start at the bottom of the food chain on Richard Stanley's Hardware and it looks as though Stanley may have had a bit of an influence on McMorrow's future direction, this one sounding like a noir-y thriller set in a future England governed by religious fanatics and featuring a masked detective for a hero. Here's the synopsis:
Esser is a broken man, searching for his wayward son amongst the rough streets of Londons homeless. Milo is a heartbroken thirty-something desperately trying to find a way back to the purity of first love. Emilia is a beautiful art student, her suicidal art projects becoming increasingly more complex and deadly. Preest is a masked vigilante detective, searching for his nemesis on the streets of Meanwhile City; a monolithic fantasy metropolis ruthlessly governed by faith and religious fervour. Esser, Milo, Emilia, Preest- a group of people who couldnt be further apart. Their individual worlds are set for a cataclysmic collision. In an explosive finale, the path of a single bullet will decide the fate of our four lost souls....
Ewan MacGregor, Paul Bettany and John Hurt were all apparently slated to star before the producers opted to go younger, replacing them with Sam Riley, Ryan Phillippe, and Bernard Hill - which looks like a marked step backwards to these eyes - with Eva Green remaining from the original cast as the lone female player. I'd never have backed off from that original cast myself but the concept is fascinating enough that I want to see how this turns out ...