Posted in: Recent Updates | Tagged:

Armando Iannucci – What The Dickens?

Film site Collider has just run a report on writer/director/professional comics fan Armando Iannucci (Day Today, Alan Partridge, The Thick Of It, In The Loop, Comics Britannia). And that he would be following up on In the Loop with biopic Out The Window, "a recount of the secret love affair between renowned author Charles Dickens and actress Nelly Ternan" based on the Charles Dickens biography by Claire Tomalin, The Invisible Woman. And that it may star Daniel Day-Lewis or Ben Whishaw as Dickens in the biopic.

The site reports that Iannucci would write the film with Roger Drew and the British Will Smith, who wrote for The Thick Of It.

Except that someone's got really confused.

Not to worry, it happens.

There is a Dickens biopic called The Invisible Woman, based on said book with said cast. But Armando Iannucci has nothing to do with it. His film, Out The Window, is a comedy about a voyeur seeing something, misinterpreting it and then getting involved in a series of escalating, physical comedy escapades. And that's the film being co-written with the British Will Smith. Possibly with Smith's associate writer Roger Drew too.

Which is quite a confusion. And they're hardly alone. The erroneous information has been reported by Talking Films,

How did this start? Well in April, Armando did talk about doing a BBC Four documentary on Dickens. Then Variety talked about Out The Window and The Invisible Woman in the same article, coming out of Cannes. The Hollywood Reporter had them as adjoining paragraphs, as did Deadline and UKPA. And then Collider seemed to be the first to collate them as the same project. And poor use of commas by the BBC didn't help. "Plans include a comedy from Armando Iannucci, a film about Charles Dickens, and an adaptation of Lionel Shriver's book We Need to Talk About Kevin."

Although the mention of British comedy writer Will Smith makes it even more confusing for some.

Poor Armando. He's just tweeted "My next film is not a biopic of Dickens. I've no idea why the media seem to think it is." Hopefully it's a bit clearer. Now get back to writing that Marvel comic, Armando!

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!