The Los Angeles-set drama has picked up development funding from Film4 and EM Media; Haigh’s second feature Weekend opens in the UK on November 4 following its LFF UK premiere.

British director Andrew Haigh – whose second feature Weekend is having its UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival this weekend - is in development on his next project, a Los Angeles-set drama called Simon Is Waiting which is being backed by Film4.

Haigh has written the script and will direct the film, which follows two hours in the life of a British actor who has moved to LA to star in an American TV show, as he waits for the results of a medical test.

He is teaming up again with Weekend producer Tristan Goligher for the project, which also has EM Media development funding. The pair hope to be in production by the end of 2012.

“It’s essentially a two hour existential crisis over that period of waiting, as his relationships collapse,” Haigh told Screen at the Dinard British Film Festival, where he picked up a special mention for Weekend, his romantic indie drama about two young gay men, played by Tom Cullen and Chris New, whose one night stand grows into something deeper over the course of a weekend.

Weekend world premiered at SXSW earlier this year, where it won an audience award and picked up rave reviews in the US press. It is currently in its third week of release in the US (via IFC), where it has grossed $170,000 to date. The film started out on one screen, where it had the highest screen average in the country, taking $48,000 in its first week. It is now playing on 14 screens.

“The Americans immediately latched on to the fact that it was a strong piece of work and resisted pigeonholing the film as a gay film. There is probably more apprehension in the UK,” explains Goligher.

“I wanted it to be about gay people and how they feel about being gay, but at the same time the film is about two people not knowing what to do with their lives. It very quickly becomes a universal experience, and people have said it is nice to see an honest depiction of a relationship, any relationship” adds Haigh.

Peccadillo Pictures is releasing Weekend in the UK on Nov 4.

Meanwhile, Goligher is also in development on two more projects for London-based production company The Bureau - a Cornish-set supernatural thriller The Vanishment and Cab Ride Home, a drama about an unlikely relationship between an African American cab driver and Marilyn Monroe at the height of the civil rights movement in 1950s America, which is being written by first time screenplay writer Charlotte Boulay Goldsmith.

 

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