Round about 2003/2004, if you’d told those of us who were unlucky enough to see the now-forgotten Leeds indie band 10,000 Things, that the band’s frontman would become a genuine, fully-fledged movie star, we’d have laughed in your face, and had you swiftly committed to an asylum. But after his acclaimed turn as Ian Curtis in “Control,” Sam Riley has managed to graduate from post-Libertines no-hoper to honest-to-god leading man, with a brace of films on the way, including “Brighton Rock,” which premieres tonight at Toronto, the crime-thriller “13,” and a much-sought-after role in Walter Salles’ “On The Road.”
After that film, which is currently shooting, Riley will return to the U.K. for an adaptation of the Anthony Burgess novel “A Dead Man In Deptford.” The book, published in 1993, focuses on the British playwright, and contemporary of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe (Rupert Everett played him in “Shakespeare in Love”) running with the popular theory that he was a spy for Queen Elizabeth, and that his death in a barroom brawl was an assassination.
Riley will play Marlowe, and will be joined in the project by Ray Winstone, James Purefoy, Ed Speleers (“Eragon”) and Adam Sinclair (“To End All Wars”). TV veteran Nick Copus will helm, from a script by Michael Elias (“The Jerk”), and filming begins in the spring. It’s a fairly strong cast, and Marlowe’s life is fascinating, so this is certainly one to keep an eye on, even if, being an independent British film, there’s always a risk that the project won’t make it in front of cameras… [The Hollywood Reporter]