Mike Leigh is set to go into production on his as-yet-untitled, super-secretive and now long-awaited next feature this year, The Hollywood Reporter can reveal
In typical style for the beloved veteran filmmaker and seven-time Oscar nominee, there’s very little else to be revealed. Untitled Mike Leigh 2023, as the project is now called, is as much under wraps as it was when it was first announced he was embarking on another film in 2020 (when it was entitled Untitled 2020). Plot, cast, and practically everything else is being kept under the thick veil of secrecy that the auteur prefers to operate. What is known is that the film was due to go into production in 2020, but was among the features impacted by the COVID pandemic. Three years on, and the wheels are finally moving.
Even despite the secrecy (which THR understands isn’t just limited to the public realm, but across buyers, too), Bleecker Street already acquired the Film4-backed feature for the U.S. — its first collaboration with the director — while eOne has U.K. rights, continuing its long-standing relationship with Leigh and his Third Man Films banner. Cornerstone Films is handling international sales and will be bringing the project (back) to Berlin.
Funding comes from Film4, Ingenious and Spanish company The Mediapro Studio, which act as co-producers. Georgina Lowe produces for Thin Man, with Gail Egan as executive producer.
Untitled Mike Leigh 2023 is the follow-up to Leigh’s 2018 period epic Peterloo, his biggest and boldest film in his 50 years of work as a director and a film exploring the events surrounding the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, which saw cavalry charge into a crowd of people who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation and which is considered one of the most notorious and defining moments in U.K. history. Amazon backed the film, leading Leigh to tell THR at the time that all his films had been financed, to some degree, by a “reprehensible force.”
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