Roman Polanski to Make Thriller About a British PM

Roman Polanski to Make Thriller About a British PM

LONDON, November 8/PRNewswire/ -- Academy Award winning director Roman Polanski is to make a feature film of Robert Harris's controversial new political thriller, The Ghost, published by Hutchinson last month.

The novel tells the story of a former British Prime Minister, struggling to complete his memoirs in Martha's Vineyard in the middle of winter. When his assistant on the project is drowned, a new ghost writer flies out from London to join him.

Filming is scheduled to begin next year. Robert Harris is currently writing the screenplay in collaboration with Polanski. The producers are Robert Benmussa and Alain Sarde, who produced Polanski's last two films, The Pianist and Oliver Twist. The film will be distributed worldwide by Summit International.

In a statement, Polanski says: "I have been looking for a political thriller to direct for some time, and The Ghost could not be more perfect. Robert has constructed a novel with such suspense, it is hard to put down."

Robert Harris says: "Roman Polanski is a terrific director of tense thrillers, and I couldn't imagine a better person to make a movie out of The Ghost. There's a lot of psychological intrigue in the story, as well as espionage and politics, and most of the action takes place in an ocean-front house during the middle of winter - all of it classic Polanski territory. I am thrilled to be working with him on the screenplay."

The two men have already collaborated once this year, on the screenplay of Harris's 2003 bestseller, Pompeii, but that US$100 million project has had to be put on hold because of the threatened Screen Actors' Guild strike, due to begin next June, which is disrupting film making throughout the world. The Ghost, which will feature an almost entirely British cast, is less vulnerable to the effects of the dispute, and will be filmed on location in northern Europe.

"It doesn't really matter where you do it," says Polanski. "It just has to be somewhere on the Atlantic off season, where you have dunes and empty roads and unlived-in holiday homes."

Note to Editors:

The Ghost by Robert Harris was published by Hutchinson on 4th October 2007 and has been on the Sunday Times top ten bestseller list ever since.

Source: The Random House Group

Contact: Emma Mitchell, Hutchinson Publicity Director, Random House, +44-207-840-8610, emitchell@randomhouse.co.uk

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Profile: International Entertainment