Gary Oldman stars as Winston Churchill for director Joe Wright in Darkest Hour, which has begun production in the U.K. Focus Features holds worldwide rights to the Working Title Films production as part of the company’s renewed global initiative. Focus will release Darkest Hour domestically on November 24th, 2017 in the U.S. and Universal Pictures International (UPI) will distribute the film globally, beginning with the U.K. on December 29th, 2017.
The original screenplay of Darkest Hour is by Anthony McCarten, an Academy Award nominee and BAFTA Award winner as screenwriter of Focus and Working Title’s Best Picture Oscar nominee The Theory of Everything. McCarten and Academy Award nominee and BAFTA Award winner Lisa Bruce (The Theory of Everything) are producing Darkest Hour with Working Title co-chairs Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, and BAFTA Award winner Douglas Urbanski (Nil by Mouth), reteaming with Focus and Working Title following Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, for which Oldman was a Best Actor Oscar nominee.
The filmmaking team includes costume designer Jacqueline Durran, an Academy Award winner for her work on Wright’s Anna Karenina for Focus and Working Title; production designer Sarah Greenwood, who has received Academy Award nominations for three previous movies directed by Wright (Anna Karenina, Atonement, Pride & Prejudice) for Focus and Working Title; composer Dario Marianelli, an Academy Award winner for scoring Wright’s Atonement for Focus and Working Title; director of photography Bruno Delbonnel, a four-time Academy Award nominee; editor Valerio Bonelli (Florence Foster Jenkins); make-up and hair designer Ivana Primorac, who has collaborated with Wright on four previous movies including Focus’ Hanna; and two-time Academy Award nominee Kazuhiro Tsuji, who will be prosthetics designer on Darkest Hour.
Within days of becoming Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill must face one of his most turbulent and defining trials: exploring a negotiated peace treaty with Nazi Germany, or standing firm to fight for the ideals, liberty and freedom of a nation. As the unstoppable Nazi forces roll across Western Europe and the threat of invasion is imminent, and with an unprepared public, a skeptical King, and his own party plotting against him, Churchill must withstand his darkest hour, rally a nation, and attempt to change the course of world history.
Joining Oldman in the Darkest Hour cast are Stephen Dillane, John Hurt, Lily James, Ben Mendelsohn, and Kristin Scott Thomas.
