William Shakespeare is still a bit of an enigma for most people, but that might be about to change as Fashion on Screen (FOS), a new EIS-approved British film funding company, has signed its first film option.
FOS has acquired an 18-month film and dramatic option in Will, the novel based on the life of Shakespeare by Scottish writer Christopher Rush. It was first published in the UK and America in 2007 and SBK Productions – the film production company owned by Sir Ben Kingsley – took out an original film option on the novel in 2008. However, the film did not reach production stage.
Managing Director of FOS Tobias Steed said: “We are delighted to have snapped up these rights. It seems only fitting that as we finish celebrating the 400th Anniversary of the Bard’s death, that we have the chance to reimagine the Bard’s life from where it ended, at his bedside.”
FOS outlines the plot:
“Will opens with William Shakespeare dying, his lawyer at his bedside. It is time to dictate his will. But how can a man put his affairs in order before he’s come to terms with his past? Rush takes readers into the mind of William Shakespeare, a man whose almost superhuman art was forged from very human frailties and misfortunes. Will takes us back to Shakespeare’s childhood, his first encounters with sex, and the dangers of politics, plague, and love.
“We hear the chilling account of the Tyburn executions, see him crossing the frozen Thames with the wooden beams that would become the Globe theatre, and return with him to Stratford on the heart-breaking journey to bury his only son. We meet Christopher Marlowe, who this very year has been attributed co-authorship in some of Shakespeare’s later plays and whose death in Deptford is depicted here in all its gruesomeness.”
Working with the poet, novelist and Shakespeare professor Rush, FOS plan to produce a new screenplay by early 2018, with the idea of bringing the film to production by the end of 2018.
