Focus Features and Working Title Films announced filming is underway on the dramatic film Darkest Hour starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill. The cast also includes Ben Mendelsohn, Lily James, John Hurt, Stephen Dillane, and Kristin Scott Thomas. Joe Wright (Pan, Atonement) is directing from a script by Oscar nominee Anthony McCarten (The Theory of Everything), with McCarten, Lisa Bruce, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, and Douglas Urbanski producing.
Production will take place in the United Kingdom. Focus will open Darkest Hour in North America on November 24, 2017. Universal Pictures International is releasing the film internationally on December 29, 2017.
Director Wright is reuniting with his Anna Karenina costume designer Jacqueline Durran, frequent collaborator production designer Sarah Greenwood, and Atonement‘s composer Dario Marianelli on Darkest Hour. Four-time Oscar nominee Bruno Delbonnel is the director of photography, two-time Oscar nominee Kazuhiro Tsuji is the prosthetics designer, and Florence Foster Jenkins‘ Valerio Bonelli is on board as the editor.
The Plot: 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.
