Principal photography has wrapped on James Marsh’s UK film Dance First which stars Irish actor Gabriel Byrne as Samuel Beckett.
The Sky Original film charts the Irish writer’s life, from his time as a fighter for the French Resistance during the Second World War to his literary rise to winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969.
The film will premiere in cinemas and on Sky Cinema in 2023.
Byrne, whose credits include The Usual Suspects and Miller’s Crossing, is joined in the cast by Aidan Gillen, Sandrine Bonnaire, Maxine Peake, Fionn O’Shea, Robert Aramayo, Leonie Lojkine, Bronagh Gallagher, Lisa Dwyer Hogg, Barry O’Connor and Gráinne Good.
This is Marsh’s second time directing a biopic following The Theory Of Everything. He previously won an Oscar in 2008, shared with Simon Chinn, for documentary Man On Wire.
Dance First is written by Neil Forsyth, who created BBC series Guilt, and produced by 2LE Media’s Michael Livingstone and Tom Thostrup, alongside Viktória Petrányi of Hungary’s Proton Cinema, Belgium’s Umedia and Fabien Westerhoff of Constellation Productions. The feature was developed from an episode of Sky Arts’ anthology series Urban Myths.
Film Constellation is handling world sales on the title, adding to a slate that also includes recent Venice premiere Blue Jean, the debut feature of UK filmmaker Georgia Oakley, Saim Sadiq’s Cannes’ award-winner Joyland and Lotfy Nathan’s Harka.
Executive producers on Dance First are Julia Stuart for Sky Cinema, Philip Edgar-Jones and Tilusha Ghelani for Sky Arts, Paul Ashton for Creative UK and Richard Mansell.
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