UK distributor Momentum Pictures is understood to have picked up Mike Leigh’s untitled new project from Focus Features International.

The details of the plot are currently unknown but the cast includes Jim Broadbent, Imelda Staunton, Philip Davis and Lesley Manville. Leigh is expected to employ his signature improvisational techniques

The film is being co-funded by Focus Features International, the UK Film Council’s Premiere Fund and Film4, which retains UK free television.

Momentum previously distributed Leigh’s earlier films Happy-Go-Luckyand Vera Drake. The distributor has refused to confirm the reports.

Following Cannes, Momentum has confirmed that it has taken UK and Irish rights to the Millenium films, which are based on Swedish writer Stieg Larsson’s trilogy of novels.

The first film in the trilogy is The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, already a major hit across Scandinavia, is directed by Danish director Niels Arden Oplev. Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace and Peter Andersson star.

It follows a journalist who after taking a break from his job on Millenium magazine, teams up with a young female hacker to uncover details of the disappearance of a 16-year old girl, forty years earlier.  

As previously reported by ScreenDaily, the distributor also acquired UK and Irish rights to Rick Jacobson’s Bitch Slap from IM Global.

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