Currently Browsing Category 'The Film'
by craig on Jun 28th in The Film
Sorry for lack of blogging. For some reason, there has been a quite extraordinary rush of interest in the film rights of Murder in Samarkand, and I have been involved in some complex and frankly exhausting negotiations. I will keep you posted. Craig
by craig on Apr 1st in The Film
I have no idea what he’s talking about. I was only just warming up. Good job he never worked with Oliver Reed… Winterbottom seems chipper, given that two projects have recently collapsed. One was A Beautiful Game, about gangs in Manchester. The other was Murder in Samarkand, based on the memoirs of the former British [...]
by craig on Feb 12th in The Film
Steve Coogan has just described the position of the film of Murder in Samarkand as “Stuck in development hell”. http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/news/scoop-murder-in-samarkand-stuck-in-development-hell.php Actually it is probably worse than that. Meantime, with no income from the putative film and my discovering just how near impossible it is to publish a book yourself and get bookshops to take it, [...]
by craig on Dec 9th in The Film
Good interview with Nadira in the Sunday Times today. It is brilliant that she now gets to tell her own story, and it certainly opens up a huge raft of questions. Apparently there are some great photos in the newspaper, which they haven’t put on the net. From The Sunday TimesDecember 9, 2007 Ambassador’s belly [...]
by craig on Dec 7th in The Film
Nadira will be performing in a one woman show to tell her extraordinary and often very harrowing story. This is entirely her point of view, and her perspective is often very different to mine. She reveals some things about me I would perhaps not have voluntered myself, but then that’s freedom of speech! She is [...]
by craig on Sep 14th in The Film
Wow! Murder in Samarkand has graduated to be a “celebrated memoir”, according to the Guardian. Well, I certainly celebrated it, anyway. In This World also gave Winterbottom a cause. He’s returned to it twice since then – with Road to Guant’namo and A Mighty Heart – and is planning a fourth: an adaptation of former [...]
by craig on Aug 13th in The Film
A long interview with Steve Coogan in The Independent today: Murray, says Coogan, is “recklessly truthful” and “heroically flawed”, the sort of well-intended but slightly damaged character that he relishes. http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article2859337.ece I am pretty happy with his characterisation of me and of Murder in Samarkand. I trust Steve and Michael, and I think they have [...]
by craig on Jul 29th in The Film
Michael Winterbottom has been talking about Murder in Samarkand Arlington, Va.: Hi Michael! I’m a big fan of yours as well as Steve Coogan’s. I loved “24 Hour Party People” and “Tristram Shandy” (and I’m fairly obsessed with everything Alan Partridge). I saw that you’re going to be reunited again for “Murder in Samarkand,” but [...]
by craig on Jul 13th in The Film
Winterbottom cites that Murray’s memoir makes for funny and riveting reading, and mentions that the first seventy pages are largely devoted to stories about all the people Mr. Murray slept with while in St. Petersburg, Russia, before going off to Uzbekistan. http://www.popcornreel.com/pearlheart.htm Basically true, although that’s not all I did (or wrote about) in St [...]
by craig on Jul 8th in The Film
I have been keeping this confidential, but now it has come out in the Sunday Telegraph’s Mandrake column, apparently sourced to David Hare. Hare given farcical cut There has always been a thin line between comedy and tragedy, but, as Sir David Hare knows only too well, it can sometimes become a little too blurred [...]
by craig on May 22nd in The Film
I have been more than usually attentive to the reception given to Michael Winterbottom’s film “A Mighty Heart” at Cannes. This has exactly the same team of producers and director as the film of my memoir Murder in Samarkand, on which the cameras are set to start rolling in February, so plainly I have a [...]
by craig on Apr 7th in The Film
This is an extract from an interview with Michael Winterbottom published in El Pais on 23 March. It is translated from the Spanish by me, so may not be perfect. Winterbottom always has three or four projects in hand. This day in March is no exception. A monitor in his London office is showing rushes [...]
by andrew on Apr 3rd in The Film
By Bill Jacobs in the Lancashire Evening Telegraph AL Pacino, Alan Rickman or Steve Coogan the Westminster guessing game has begun over who will play Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in a new film. Blackburn producer and director Michael Winterbottom is planning to bring former ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray’s story to cinema screens next year. [...]
by andrew on Mar 30th in The Film
By Ewen MacAskill in The Guardian One of the most embarrassing episodes for the Foreign Office in recent years is about to become even more embarrassing. British film-makers are planning to make a movie for release next year about the exploits of the renegade British ambassador, Craig Murray, with Steve Coogan in the running to [...]
by andrew on Mar 2nd in The Film
From Greatreporter.com Few things sell a film better than intrigue and curiosity. Good news for director Michael Winterbottom. Bad news for the British government… Winterbottom has just optioned Murder in Samarkand, the as-yet unpublished memoirs of Britain’s former Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray. The interest is heightened by Winterbottom’s seemingly odd assertion that the book [...]
by andrew on Feb 27th in The Film
From OhMy News Director Michael Winterbottom has taken an option on “Murder in Samarkand,” the forthcoming book by Craig Murray, a former ambassador to Uzbekistan, detailing his dismissal in October 2004 “after exposing appalling human rights abuses by the U.S.-funded regime of President Islam Karimov,” according to the publisher. Winterbottom’s most recent film “The Road [...]
by andrew on Feb 24th in The Film
From Times Online A celluloid headache awaits the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The controversial memoirs of Craig Murray (former Ambassador to Uzbekistan) are to be made into a movie. Slightly weirdly, Michael Winterbottom, the director (24 Hour Party People, The Road to Guant’namo), has optioned Murder in Samarkand, which ‘ court battles permitting ‘ is [...]
by richard on Feb 23rd in The Film
From Dark Horizons Controversial British director Michael Winterbottom (“9 Songs”, “Code 46″, “The Road to Guantanamo”) has set yet another hot button project as his next film – “Murder in Samarkand” reports Production Weekly. Based on the memoirs of Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, the film will follow his famous firing in [...]
