A-list actors approached to play lead role in Toilers film
A-LIST actors including Tom Hardy and Chris Pine have been named as potential leads in the planned film of Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea.
A script has been written and a composer brought in to create the music for the film, which husband-and-wife producer team David Shanks and Joy Mellins plan to shoot in Guernsey.
The couple spent the New Year at their home, a canal boat on the River Thames, setting about making contact with potential actors.
Victor Hugo’s story focuses on a fisherman, Gilliatt, who falls in love with the niece of a local ship owner and ventures into a ship wreck to try to salvage its engine and win her over.
Tom Hardy, Jason Isaacs, Cillian Murphy and Chris Pine are all seen as potential leads, said Ms Mellins: ‘We’ve got an offer out for our lead character but it takes time. All of those actors are on the wish list, an indication of the level of cast that we are looking for.
‘They will never earn from this what they would get for a Star Wars role but they will get a good deal, an Oscar perhaps. This film is about Gilliatt in the same way that Leonardo Di Caprio did The Revenant, because he wanted to give that performance.’
Originally the plan was for the movie not to have any dialogue, following a succession of poor scripts being submitted.
But that has changed and an ‘impressive’ script has been written by Connor Lasic, a former student of Ms Mellins at St Mary’s University.
‘I have written scripts but I didn’t have the inclination to write Toilers. Connor had already left university but he said he would love the opportunity and he did a brilliant job.
‘He read the book several times and we worked with him on five drafts. He did a hell of a lot of work. We were delighted with the last draft.’
Although no longer a dialogue-free movie, music will still play an important part and film composer John Cameron, who worked on the music for the movie version of Les Miserables, is writing the score.
‘From the beginning we have always said that music is incredibly important in this film,’ said Mr Shanks.
‘For a quarter of the script, Gilliatt is by himself on the rocks trying to save his ship, the whole piece is so atmospheric. We wanted music to be a part of the creative process rather than something that it is tagged on at the end.
‘The actors will feel the tone and give them the atmosphere that we are seeking. Filming is a very cold-blooded business, especially when you have green screens, it sucks the life out of it.’
Mr Shanks has dreamed of filming the book for more than 30 years, and after the disappointment of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society being filmed outside the island, he was determined that Toilers would be shot here.
While this will apply to most of the story, one sequence that will require a studio is the dramatic scenes set on the shipwreck, and for that the producers have looked at filming on a set in Malta.
n Information and photographs kindly supplied by Hyde News and Pictures.
