David Tennant: project news and updates

Leith, camera, action: Proclaimers musical to become a film

Sunshine on Leith, the hit musical based on The Proclaimers’ songs, is to be turned into a film with David Tennant and Billy Connolly tipped for key roles.

A huge song and dance routine will be filmed on Calton Hill in Edinburgh this autumn, with as many as 1,000 extras taking part.

Former Doctor Who star Tennant has already expressed his interest in the role, and it is understood producers are keen to draft in Annie Lennox and the “Big Yin.”

Tennant is a huge fan of the band, highlighting them in an appearance on Desert Island Discs.

Though casting has yet to take place, it is hoped the film will debut at the Edinburgh film festival next year.

Read more at Deadline News 
Also reported by The Scotsman



Doctor Who star David Tennant films BBC drama in Watford
Former Doctor Who star David Tennant is not known for being camera shy but did his best to keep his head down while filming in Watford on Friday.
The 41-year-old Scot was spotted outside Christ Church on St Albans Road filming scenes for his latest project – a three-part BBC drama series.
Tennant, wearing a dark suit and a white shirt, sat in an Audi saloon car before running for cover the moment filming was completed.
The drama, titled The Politician’s Husband, is expected to air on BBC 2 in 2013.
Source (with photo): Watford Observer
 

News updates from David Tennant On Twitter: 

• Shakespeare Unlocked

TenAlpsplc has announced that Prefaces to Shakespeare has been renamed Shakespeare Unlocked. The series begins on Tuesday 19th June on BBC Four and David Tennant's episode about Hamlet is likely to broadcast on Tuesday 10th July. 
More details here

• James Bond audio collection

Ian Fleming.com has announced that David Tennant will read On Her Majesty's Secret Service in a new audio collection of Ian Fleming's classic Bond novels due to be released on Thursday 6th September. Pre-orders will be available from 1st August.

• Fright Night

Fright Night has its UK television première on Friday 22nd June. More details here

• Shakespeare iPad app

The Shakespeare Sonnets app for iPads was due for release on Monday 11 June but it has been delayed until Thursday 28th June.
The Shakespeare Sonnets iPad app (with some read by David Tennant) will also be released on DVD. It can be pre-ordered from this link 

News updates source: David Tennant On Twitter

Peter Capaldi: Whisky Stramash | Punk Britannia BBC Breakfast interview

Peter Capaldi performs at forthcoming Whisky Stramash

As the final touches are being put in place for 2012’s most unique whisky event, the inaugural Edinburgh Whisky Stramash, which takes place at Surgeons’ Hall on 26th & 27th May, some details of the cast performing the Jura Murder Mystery have been announced.

The Jura Murder Mystery, an experience at this year’s Whisky Stramash, allows audiences to witness the suspense shortly after the gruesome demise of a fictitious Jura Distillery Manager in a classic whodunnit. Peter Capaldi has been cast as the murdered Distillery Manager who comes to life to tell the story in the production that has been described as “Scoobie Do meets Coronation Street”. 

At the conclusion of the play, audiences will be invited to guess who they suspect the perpetrator to be for the chance of winning a once in a lifetime trip to Jura.

Read more at The Whisky Stramash

Also reported by The Scotsman  

Peter capaldi narrates ‘Punk Britannia’

Episode 1 of 3: Pre-Punk 1972-1976

Narrated by Peter Capaldi, this opener of a three-part documentary series in BBC FOUR's celebrated 'Britannia' strand is scheduled to chime with the 35th anniversary of the Queen's Silver Jubilee and the arrival of punk as national and then international music culture.

Fri 1 Jun 2012 BBC Four 21:00

Read more at BBC 

 

From February, a BBC Breakfast interview with Peter Capaldi

Source: YouTube

David Tennant: new TV drama, United news, TV appearances

David Tennant to star in TV drama 'The Spies Of Warsaw'
 
Former Doctor Who star David Tennant will play a French spy in a new two-part Second World War-era drama by Likely Lads writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais.
The actor will appear with Merlin star Janet Montgomery in the BBC Four show The Spies Of Warsaw based on the best-selling novel by Alan Furst.

Tennant's character is drawn into the murky world of espionage in the story which is set in Poland, Paris, London and Berlin in the years leading up to the outbreak of war.
BBC Four controller Richard Klein described the show as "a tense, passionate and sexy love story set against the increasingly strident clang of coming war".

He said: "Spies Of Warsaw is an entertaining, thrilling and insightful drama with a very different take on the Second World War, seen through the eyes of characters who know from the start that they and their fellow countrymen will face the brunt of the horrors to come: this is top class drama, and perfect for BBC Four."

Clement and La Frenais have written some of the most popular British television shows of the last 40 years including The Likely Lads, Porridge and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.
Filming will start next month in Poland.

Source: The Independent


Also reported by Hollywood Reporter  Televisual ATVToday TheaterMania, and many more!

Regular updates on The Spies of Warsaw can be found at David Tennant On Twitter 

Netflix Sign Up BBC United Drama For Streaming

Netflix are said to be one of several international buyers of the rights to BBC’s English direct-to-TV film United, a feature starring David Tennant and Dougray Scott, based on the true story of the tragic 1958 Munich air disaster that killed many of the Manchester United football team of that season.

The crash, which saw 21 people (including 8 players) lose their lives (out of a total 45 people on-board the plane), shocked the world of football (in particular in England), and tributes are still made to this day, most notably on its 50th anniversary in 2008. The 90-minute long film, written by Chris Chibnall and directed by James Strong, was first aired over three years later.
A year after it was premièred on BBC Two, the production is now being licensed abroad through Content Television, with online streaming giant Netflix snapping up the broadcasting rights in both USA and Canada.

Other multiple rights holders now include Universal Pictures Pty for Australia & New Zealand, Tele-Munchen Group for ‘German-speaking Europe’, and subscription HBO for a number of countries throughout Asia. European nation-wide broadcasters picking up rights include TV2 (Denmark), RTE (Ireland), NRK (Norway), ITI Neovision (Poland), and SVT (Sweden), and ITI Neovision (Poland). Paradiso hold all rights to United in Japan, whilst M Pictures hold a similar arrangement in Thailand, and a number of other providers such as Sundance Global Channel and Carmen Film have also signed deals, the culmination of an impressive session in Cannes (France) for Content Television.

Source: World TV PC
 
Also reported by Virtual Press Office and C21 Media

This week's TV appearances

• Thurs 12 April - The Minor Character, Sky Arts channel at 9pm.

• Fri 13 April - Episode Three of the David Tennant narrated comedy Twenty Twelve, BBC Two at 10pm.

• Sun 15 April - Discovering Hamlet at 9.40pm on Sky Arts 2 HD.

Source: David Tennant on Twitter

Veteran actor Brian Cox is to bring his Radio 4 character Bob Servant, a pompous Dundonian businessman, to the small screen for a BBC Four series.

The character, created by Neil Forsyth, first appeared in the 2007 book Delete This At Your Peril, which featured email exchanges with internet scammers.

Bob Servant Independent will follow the character's attempts to become the MP for Broughty Ferry.

Cox said the TV transfer would capture the series' "unique east coast humour".

The 65-year-old actor also praised "the comic writing skills of fellow Dundonian Neil Forsyth and the audacious spirit of Bob Servant".

Cox, who has starred in Hollywood films Troy and the Bourne series, first played the role on BBC Radio Scotland's The Bob Servant Emails, which was later broadcast on Radio 4.

Forsyth's character also features in books Bob Servant - Hero of Dundee and Why Me? The Very Important Emails of Bob Servant.

The fictional character is described on his website as "Scotland's most respected man of letters".

"In the 1970s, his window cleaning round was generally accepted as being the largest in western Europe while his key role in Dundee's cheeseburger wars of the 1980s saw him pushed to national prominence," it adds.

Source BBC

Also reported by Daily Record and The Stage

Peter Capaldi in The Cricklewood Greats

Peter Capaldi plays it straight as a film buff and devotee of the now defunct Cricklewood Studios. Pure fiction, of course, but pinning spoofs of cheap British movies and even cheaper British movie stars onto a made-up studio lets Capaldi and co-writer Tony Roche have some arch fun.

Capaldi presents this “documentary” celebrating the output of his beloved Cricklewood Studios (now a DIY superstore). He recalls Florrie Fontaine (Lindsay Marshal), a terrifyingly cheerful Gracie Fields-type singer whose career died when she became friendly with Nazi high command: “I speak as I find, and they were grand company.”

Watch out for Hustle’s Kelly Adams as a Barbara Windsor-ish bimbette, star of the Thumbs Up series. But the show is stolen by Terry Gilliam, playing himself, a profligate director who brought the studio to its knees.

About this programme:
Spoof documentary, presented by Peter Capaldi, telling the story of Cricklewood Film Studios, a fictional British movie company. He charts its contributions to cinematic history, ranging from silent comedies to gory horror films, and recalls the often turbulent lives of some of its biggest stars. The programme also features interviews with Terry Gilliam and actress Marcia Warren.

BBC 4, Sunday 5 February at 9.45 p.m.

Source: Radio Times

Douglas Henshall to play Sean Langan in BBC Four single drama Hotel Taliban

Douglas Henshall (South Riding, The Silence) will play award-winning journalist, Sean Langan, who was kidnapped and held hostage by the Taliban in 2008, in BBC Four’s gripping and intense single drama, Hotel Taliban, co-written by Norman Hull and Sean Langan.

Currently in production for transmission in 2012, Hotel Taliban will dramatise the events as told in Sean’s diaries, as well as Sean’s testimony to the film producers in which he described the ordeal he and his interpreter Sami went through during their three-and-a-half months in captivity.

In early 2008, documentary filmmaker Sean Langan was ready for his next assignment – to gain access to the Taliban training camps in the tribal areas of Pakistan, despite being a no-go zone for foreign journalists. After months negotiating access to key Taliban leaders via his fixer, Sami, Sean crossed the border into Pakistan. But things didn’t go to plan. Kidnapped and accused of being a spy, Sean and Sami were held hostage for three-and-a-half months, awaiting their fate – death or release. During his captivity, Sean’s survival instinct found him befriending the family holding him hostage, and from a difficult and dangerous situation, Sean discovered a central common humanity, as well as bizarre moments of cultural misunderstanding.

Richard Klein, Controller, BBC Four, says: "It’s a mad, mad, mad world - that's the sentiment I got when Sean Langan told me of his astonishing three-and-a-half month kidnapping by the Taliban. Not just terrifying, though it truly was, but also absurd, moving and funny: Sean's story is really a story of our times, how a journalist obsessed with getting his story finds himself instead locked in a game of words with captors who have as far removed a view of the Western world as Martians. And yet what Sean discovered was that these people were in many ways just like him. Hotel Taliban tells a gripping, terrifying and thrilling story that has a happy ending, thank goodness.”

Key cast also include: Jimi Mistry (Strike Back, East Is East) as Sami; Ramon Tikaram (EastEnders, This Life) as Mr C; Kate Ashfield (Diary Of Anne Frank, Collision; Line Of Duty) as Anabel Langan; Matthew Marsh (Hidden) as Kane; and Andreas Karras will play Gul Jan.

A Garden Production for BBC Four, Hotel Taliban is co-written by Norman Hull and Sean Langan. The director is Norman Hull. The producer is Flavia Taylor; and the executive producers are Stephen Wright and Jamie Laurenson for the BBC and Magnus Temple for Garden.

Hotel Taliban was commissioned by Richard Klein, Controller, BBC Four and Ben Stephenson, Controller, BBC Drama Commissioning.
Source: BBC
Also reported by The Stage and ATV Today