Almost a year after Bruno Heller first hinted at a feature adaptation of his acclaimed HBO series Rome, actor Kevin McKidd, better known to fans of the film as Lucius Vorenus has been talking about the film. A lot.
In an interview with the New York Post’s Popwrap column McKidd talked about the script, saying “There is a script that is being shopped and it’s supposedly very good, I haven’t seen it, but I am definitely going to be a part of the movie“.
A day later he gave a bit more information during an interview with TV Guide.
“It’s happening. Bruno Heller, who’s now the creator of The Mentalist,has been talking to me about this idea of a movie. Sure enough, Bruno has finished the first draft, some people in the business have read it. He’s doing his rewrite now. The hope is that we’re going to try to raise the money and shoot it in the hiatus between Season 6 and Season 7 of Grey’s“.
As much as we hope that the film actually goes into production, we’re not holding our breath just yet. Despite the critical accolades for the series HBO and the BBC, co-producers on the series, decided to pull the plug after two seasons, reputedly due to the massive cost of filming each episode. Presumably any film would be hugely expensive, possibly prohibitively so, especially given the mediocre track record of TV spin-offs at the box office.
The other issue that the production will have to contend with is whether the script is suitably cinematic.
On the small screen Rome was able to balance political intrigue with small scale action perfectly. While it never had the budget to show the larger battles in a satisfactory fashion, the street fights and tavern brawls it featured were a perfect counterpoint to the simmering tensions present in the series. It’s unlikely that this limited action would carry a film.
Worse still for the production, the period of history immediately after the defeat of RomeMarc Anthony (the point at which the series ended) was relatively peaceful, with Augustus consolidating power, but nothing on the scale of the battles the second series touched upon.
Bruno Heller previously talked about using the “rise of the messiah in Palestine“ as a backdrop. The problem with this is that by the time Jesus started making trouble for the Romans, Augustus was long dead. Even if the film were to deal with the birth of the historical figure of Jesus it would still be set fourteen years after the end of the series.
We have contacted HBO and the BBC to try to get more details on the project. We’ll let you know what they’re saying as soon as they get back to us.
