Brighton Rock article and Sam Riley candids on set




Brit cast set to star in remake of 1947 Richard Attenborough thriller Brighton Rock
(cast includes: Helen Mirren, Sam Riley, Carey Mulligan, Andrea Riseborough)

Rose will be played by Carey Mulligan a 23-year-old actress who has a string of films about to be released and in production that will turn her into a major rising star. Rose was played by Carol Marsh in the 1947 version made by John and Roy Boulting.

Carey played opposite Keira Knightley as one of the Bennett sisters in the film Pride and Prejudice and has just filmed another picture with Keira called Never Let Me Go.

She has the lead in An Education, a film due out in the Autumn, plus a small role alongside Johnny Depp in the American gangster film Public Enemies. She has also appeared in Dr Who, Waking the Dead and the BBC serial of Bleak House.

'They're a sexy pair of actors,' Paul Webster, the new Brighton Rock's producer noted in Cannes today. The £8million movie is being backed by BBC Films and Optimum Films, a production company which controls the rights to the first Brighton Rock film.

'It will be sexy and cinematic,' Webster added.

Rowan Joffe who has adapated Green's novel and will direct the film, which starts filming in September, believes a modern audience would not want to sit through a new film that was set in the Forties.

'The mores and censorship at the time the first film was made meant the film-makers were not able to explore the violence in the book and we need to get away from that era to fully explore the truth of the story.

'The book itself is explicitly sexual and Greene crossed boundaries and wasn't afraid of exposing taboos.

'The essence is that Pinkie wants to kill a girl he fancies. He's a teenager full of hormones and now I can show the truth of that, ' Joffe told the Daily Mail.

Joffe said that moving the film to 1964 'was a real head-long plunge into sexual modernity.'

He added that it was a time when a new type of music was being ushered in and Mods and Rockers battled it out for domination over the culture. Also the Kray twins were gangland kingpins and for a kid like Pinkie they would have been some kind of inspiration in the 1960s.

The film maker didn't want to bring Brighton Rock right up to date and set it in contemporary times for one important reason. 1964 was the last year the death penalty was carried out, and that threat over Pinkie is an important plot point.

'Pinkie believes Rose can finger him for murder so he marries her, he doesn't want to hang,' explained Joffe.

'Pinkie is a psycho sexually-abused kid who has become a cold-blooded killer. He's a complex creation and we can bring him fully to life,' Joffe said.

However, because the 1947 film is such a classic, Joffe admits to being 'terrified' of making a new version.

'I intend to contact Lord Attenborough and hope he will allow me to take him to lunch for me to explain what I plan to do with Brighton Rock. He was so much a part of it that I would like him to know what's happening.

Sam Riley











Andrea Riseborough







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