Oscar winner Helen Mirren and Pete Postlethwaite are to star in a big-screen remake of Graham Greene’s 1939 novel Brighton Rock, alongside Sam Riley, who will take the central role of Pinkie Brown, and Andrea Riseborough, who will play Rose Brown.

The new adaptation, from Spooks producer Kudos Pictures in association with BBC Films, will shift the story to 1964, a year in which south coast clashes occurred between teenage mods and older rockers.

Brighton Rock was adapted as a film in 1947, directed by John Boulting and with Richard Attenborough as the razor-wielding teenager Pinkie.

Riley, who won critical acclaim for his portrayal of the Joy Division singer Ian Curtis in Control, will follow Attenborough in the Pinkie role. Riseborough, who was nominated for a Bafta for her portrayal of a young Margaret Thatcher in BBC4 drama The Long Walk to Finchley, will play the young waitress seduced by Pinkie Brown after she stumbles on evidence linking him and his gang to a killing.

Mirren will star as Ida Arnold, the amateur detective who sets out to find the truth of the killing, while Postlethwaite plays Brighton gangster Phil Corkery.

The movie, which is due to start shooting in October on location in Brighton and London, will be adapted and directed by Rowan Joffe in his debut directing feature. He previously co-wrote the movie 28 Days Later and directed Channel 4′s The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall, for which he won a Bafta.

Joffe said he moved the action to 1964, which was also the last year in which the death penalty was actively carried out, to refresh the story.

“We’re making Brighton Rock as contemporary as we possibly can because the story feels ‘modern’. It’s too alive, too vibrant and too relevant to be contained in the late 1930s,” he said.

“Any form of adaptation is corruption. And Greene – who lovingly and pragmatically corrupted much of his own work to fit the big screen – would have been the first to understand that.”

Producer Paul Webster, whose credits include Atonement, added: “Rowan has written a formidable script that has attracted a cast that is a perfect blend of youth and experience. The scene is set to make a truly great British gangster film.”

Christine Langan, the creative director of BBC Films, said Joffe’s adaptation was a “very powerful piece of writing”.

“The confidence of his work to date, the brilliant cast he has assembled and the strength of the team behind him, make Brighton Rock a truly exciting debut feature and one which BBC Films is very happy to support,” she said.

Brighton Rock will be made by Kudos Pictures and Optimum Releasing, in association with BBC Films and the UK Film Council’s Premiere Fund. The film has also been supported by the UK Film Council’s Development Fund through Optimum Releasing and StudioCanal.

RELATED GALLERY LINKS :

Photoshoots > 2002 & Before > G. Shaw
Photoshoots > 2007 > BAFTA Portrait Session
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An interview with Taylor Hackford about living with wife Helen Mirren.

The thing that turns me on – as a man and as an artist – is talent. The fact that Helen is a great actress was an important part of my attraction to her. That she’s a very sexy woman wasn’t lost on me either. Our first proper encounter was not exactly what you would call positive. I had seen her before in an experimental performance in California; three or four years later, I called her in for a casting for White Nights with Mikhail Baryshnikov [released in 1985]. I was running late and out getting a sandwich when she arrived. When we got back, she was piping mad. She said, “Are we going to read, or not?” She read beautifully, of course, and got the part; though she certainly wasn’t courteous.

Last year we worked together again, on my film Love Ranch. When she first arrived on set, she had just caught flu. It’s hard when you’re sleeping with someone every night who is hacking and coughing, then you have to ask them to get up and work the next day in sub-freezing temperatures; but she was incredible. My wife is always the leader on-set (not just in my films); to have the star of your film standing there like a rock, delivering in the most brilliant way, is such a gift.

Taking on the role of the Queen in Stephen Frears’s film was an incredibly difficult decision for her. I hadn’t visited her on-set, and hadn’t seen her in the role until the premiere at the Venice film festival. The first image on the screen was the Queen sitting for a portrait, and she’s dressed in all her queenly drag. I was surprised and shocked. I just broke out laughing – and I have a very large laugh. She was saying, “Shhh! Stop it!” Then when I had settled into the film, she leaned over and said, “Darling, will you ever sleep with me again?”

RELATED GALLERY LINKS :

Photoshoots > 2009 > C. Macmillan
Photoshoots > 2009 > National Theatre Portrait Session
Photoshoots > 2009 > Portrait Session
Photoshoots > 2008 > National Treasure Portrait Session (Part Two)
Photoshoots > 2008 > Time Out Magazine
Photoshoots > 2008 > Trinity College Portrait Session

Taylor Hackford, director of movies including “Ray,” “Dolores Claiborne” and “An Officer and a Gentleman,” will succeed Michael Apted as president of the Directors Guild of America.

Hackford was chosen Saturday during the guild’s biennial national convention at Directors Guild headquarters in Hollywood. Steven Soderbergh was re-elected national vice president, and Gilbert Cates was re-elected secretary-treasurer.

The 135 delegates on hand also elected members of a new national board of directors. The union represents more than 14,000 members.

After a year and a half of labor unrest, which included a four-month writers’ strike and a protracted stand-off by the leading Hollywood actors‘ union, Hackford faces the challenge of navigating the next round of contract negotiations looming in 2011.

With new-media considerations dominating the previous round’s contentious debates, that next round most likely will unfold as a battle over the digital future and how Hollywood’s creative community should be compensated as content migrates to the Web.

Hackford took aim at Internet piracy in a statement after his victory. “We have to be aware of the challenges we’re facing in protecting our work on the Internet,” he said. “What’s euphemistically called ‘Internet piracy,’ I choose to call by its true name, ‘Internet theft.’ It threatens the future of our economic lives: our employment, residuals and pension and health plans. Solutions won’t come easy, but they must be found, if we are going to survive as professional filmmakers.”

Apted served three consecutive two-year terms after he was elected to succeed Martha Coolidge in 2003.