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Vanity Fair has released an exclusive first look at Sam’s new show, Daisy Jones & the Six! The article comes with an interview with the producers and the cast of the show and how it came together, and some first official images from the show. Amazon Prime Video has also announced that its series premiere is set on March 03, 2023! Check out the images in our gallery and more of the interview under the cut.
THR – Sam Claflin will star opposite Riley Keough in the musical drama based on Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel.
Amazon’s rock-music drama Daisy Jones and the Six has found its male lead.
Sam Claflin (The Hunger Games franchise, Me Before You) will star opposite Riley Keough in the series, which chronicles the rise and fall of a renowned (fictional) 1970s rock band. Amazon Studios, Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine and Circle of Confusion are producing the 12-episode show, which is based on Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel of the same title.
Claflin’s character, Billy Dunne, is the band’s charismatic frontman. His increasingly complicated feelings for bandmate and songwriting partner Daisy (Keough) threaten to upend every facet of his life.
Will Graham (The Man in the High Castle, Mozart in the Jungle) will serve as showrunner and executive produces with Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter for Hello Sunshine, Brad Mendelsohn for Circle of Confusion, director Niki Caro and creators Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber. Author Reid is a producer.
Claflin played Finnick Odair in the Hunger Games films. He recently wrapped feature Every Breath You Take opposite Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan and stars with Olivia Munn in Netflix’s Love. Wedding. Repeat, due later this year.
His credits also include the most recent season of Peaky Blinders, My Cousin Rachel and The Huntsman: Winter’s War. He is repped by CAA, Independent Talent Group and Douglas Stone.
Daisy Jones and the Six doesn’t yet have a premiere date. It’s part of a slate of upcoming Amazon series that also includes Jack Reacher, based on Lee Child’s novels, a mega-budgeted Lord of the Rings adaptation, fantasy drama Wheel of Time and global thriller Citadel, from Avengers helmers Joe and Anthony Russo.
DEADLINE – EXCLUSIVE: Season 5 of Steven Knight’s period crime saga Peaky Blinders has set a host of new cast, including Sam Claflin, Brian Gleeson and the previously announced Anya Taylor-Joy. The BAFTA winning drama that’s led by Cillian Murphy, Helen McCrory and Paul Anderson is currently filming with the fifth go-round for the Shelby family expected to air in 2019, moving from its previous BBC Two home to BBC One.
Also new to the series are Neil Maskell (Happy New Year, In Darkness), Kate Dickie (The Cry, The Witch), Cosmo Jarvis (Calm With Horses, Lady Macbeth), Emmett J Scanlan (Butterfly, Safe), Elliot Cowan (The Spanish Princess), Charlene McKenna (Ripper Street), Andrew Koji (Warrior) and Daryl McCormack (A Very English Scandal). We do not yet have character descriptions.
This year’s big name additions follow on from Season 4 which included Adrien Brody and Game Of Thrones‘ Aidan Gillen.
Claflin recently starred in Baltasar Kormakur’s Adrift and is in Jennifer Kent’s Venice Film Festival award winner The Nightingale. Gleeson was last seen in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread. Taylor-Joy recently appeared in BBC/Masterpiece mini The Miniaturist and has M Night Shyamalan’s Glass on deck.
Claflin says, “From Steven Knight’s writing to the consistently brilliant production, I couldn’t feel more privileged to be invited to join this iconic show.” Gleeson adds, “Looking forward to kicking around in the mud of Northern England with an exceptional cast and crew. The scripts are wild and pertinent — a classic Peaky brew.”
The new cast join the previously announced returning cast members Sophie Rundle, Finn Cole, Kate Phillips, Natasha O’Keeffe, Aidan Gillen, Jack Rowan, Charlie Murphy, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Harry Kirton, Packy Lee, Ned Dennehy, Ian Peck and Benjamin Zephaniah.
Season five finds the world thrown into turmoil by the financial crash of 1929. Opportunity and misfortune are everywhere. When Tommy Shelby MP (Murphy) is approached by a charismatic politician with a bold vision for Britain, he realizes that his response will affect not just his family’s future but that of the entire nation.
The fifth season is directed by Anthony Byrne and produced by Annie Harrison-Baxter. Peaky Blinders is produced by Caryn Mandabach Productions and Tiger Aspect Drama for BBC One; executive producers are Caryn Mandabach, Knight, Jamie Glazebrook, David Mason, Cillian Murphy, Patrick Spence and Tommy Bulfin.
The show is handled by Endemol Shine International, and has sold across 183 countries. It airs widely on Netflix internationally including in the U.S.
Claflin is repped by CAA and Independent Talent Group. Gleeson is with The Agency and Paradigm.
COMING SOON – STXfilms sets a summer release date for Adrift starring Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin
STXfilms today announced that the upcoming film Adrift has been set for June 1, 2018. Starring Shailene Woodley (The Fault in Our Stars, Divergent films) and Sam Claflin (Me Before You, The Hunger Games films), Adrift is based on the inspiring true story of two free spirits whose chance encounter leads them first to love, and then to the adventure of a lifetime. The June 1 date currently has the film opening by itself. The week before marks the release of Solo: A Star Wars Story, and the week after has Ocean’s Eight and Won’t You Be My Neighbor? opening.
As the two avid sailors set out on a journey across the ocean, Tami Oldham (Woodley) and Richard Sharp (Claflin) couldn’t anticipate they would be sailing directly into one of the most catastrophic hurricanes in recorded history. In the aftermath of the storm, Tami awakens to find Richard badly injured and their boat in ruins. With no hope for rescue, Tami must find the strength and determination to save herself and the only man she has ever loved.
Adrift is directed by Baltasar Kormákur from a screenplay by Aaron Kandell, Jordan Kandell, and David Branson Smith, based on the book Red Sky in Mourning: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Survival at Sea by Tami Oldham Ashcraft with Susea McGearhart. The film is produced by Baltasar Kormákur, Aaron Kandell, and Jordan Kandell.
Woodley is known for her work in the Divergent series of films. She played the lead in the young adult drama The Fault in Our Stars, and appeared in The Descendants. She played a role in the series The Secret Life of the American Teenager and is currently starring in the HBO drama Big Little Lies.
Claflin is known for his work in films like the final three Hunger Games films, Me Before You with Emilia Clarke, Snow White and the Huntsman with Kristen Stewart and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. He’s appeared in the TV miniseries White Heat and the miniseries The Pillars of the Earth. He played a role in the TV series Any Human Heart.
SCREENDAILY – For Sam Claflin, it was seeing Journey’s End on the stage that first ignited his passion to play the role of young First World War officer Captain Stanhope. The Suffolk-born actor was in his second year at London acting school Lamda when students in the graduating year presented the 1928 RC Sherriff play.
“I just remember being completely spellbound,” says Claflin. “Being completely in awe, not only of the performances, but the story and the characters and the relationships and the world that was created. I remember sitting there in the audience thinking, ‘I have to do this play. I have to somehow find a way of doing this professionally.’”
That chance seemed to come when theatre director David Grindley, who had mounted a successful version of the play in 2004, sounded out Claflin about starring in a revival. “We sat in the Groucho, and I was basically swearing, very excited,” recalls the actor. “But we couldn’t. I was in the middle of doing The Hunger Games. There was an array of scheduling conflicts.”
Instead, the 2010 Screen International Star of Tomorrow became attached to a film version, adapted by Simon Reade and produced by Reade and Guy de Beaujeu — who had previously collaborated on the 2012 film version of Michael Morpurgo’s First World War novel Private Peaceful. After two years of rather tentative momentum, the film finally came together for a pre-Christmas shoot in 2016, with Saul Dibb, whose credits include The Duchess and Suite Francaise, in the director’s chair.
Sherriff’s play is set in an officer’s bunker beneath a British trench in northern France in the spring of 1918. The men of C-company, commanded by Stanhope, are in the front line, and braced for an imminent German attack. The battle-weary Stanhope hits the whisky bottle to get him through each night, and suffers shame and angry self-loathing when his degeneration is witnessed by teenage officer Raleigh (Asa Butterfield), a younger boy who idolised him at school and who is placed into the company for his very first posting. Reade in fact based his adaptation partly on Sherriff’s later novel version, which opens out the action beyond the dugout without sacrificing its claustrophobic essence.
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DEADLINE – Sam Claflin is set to star in upcoming crime thriller Semper Fi, directed by Murderball’s Henry-Alex Rubin. David Lancaster (Whiplash, Nightcrawler) of Rumble Films and Karina Miller (To the Bone) from Sparkhouse Media are producing, with Sparkhouse also financing.
Cornerstone Films is handling international sales rights for the title, and co-repping U.S. rights with CAA, which packaged and financed the film. Project will be launched to buyers at the Cannes Film Festival this month.
Claflin, who has starred in projects such as Me Before You, Their Finest and The Hunger Games, will play Hopper, a straight-laced cop who fills his downtime as a Sergeant in the Marine Corps Reservists alongside a close-knit team of life-long friends – Jaeger, Daddy and Snowball. A rowdy but inseparable bunch of guys, they look out for each other no matter what, including keeping an eye out for Hopper’s younger, reckless brother Oyster.
When Oyster accidentally kills a man in a bar-room brawl and tries to flee town, Hopper stops him and forces him to face the music, resulting in him ending up in prison. But, after being deployed to Iraq, Hopper feels wracked with guilt when he returns home and he and his friends hatch a plan to break Oyster out of jail.
“I couldn’t be more excited about Semper Fi,” Miller said. “At its core, it’s about what it means to truly stand by the people you love. It’s thrilling and entertaining but also emotional.”
Claflin and Rubin are repped by CAA; Claflin is also repped by Independent Talent Group in the UK.
Collider – From director Lone Scherfig and adapted from the novel Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans, the romantic drama Their Finest is set in the midst of the devastating Second World War, when movies became a crucial outlet to raise the spirits of the nation during wartime. Catrin Col (Gemma Arterton) is employed to write female dialogue, referred to as “slop” by her male co-writers, for original British Ministry of Information propaganda feature films with fellow screenwriter Buckley (Sam Claflin), and as the two work together, they realize that there can be just as much passion behind the camera as there is on screen.
During this phone interview with Collider, co-stars Sam Claflin and Bill Nighy (who plays the self-absorbed but charismatic thespian, Ambrose Hilliard, whose days of being a romantic lead are well behind him) talked about what attracted them to Their Finest, the story’s feeling of nostalgia, learning to work on a typewriter, how dreamy it was to work with co-star Gemma Arterton, and why people love the collective experience of watching movies. Claflin also talked about My Cousin Rachel and the experience of working with Rachel Weisz, while Nighy talked about playing a very nice man in The Bookshop, opposite Emily Mortimer.
Collider: What was it about this script that made you want to be a part of telling this story and playing this character?
BILL NIGHY: To be honest, it was triggered by the prospect of working with (director) Lone Scherfig. That was my initial enthusiasm. And then, when I read the script, it was a wonderful script full of humor and humanity, which appealed to me. It was also something that I’m interested in. I’m interested in making movies and I’m interested in that period. People in the U.K. have a very specific nostalgia for that time, and I thought it beautifully expressed the details of how people’s lives were, during that time, and the general feeling, and how people can remain compassionate in truly dangerous times, rather than like compassion during strategically invented dangerous times. It’s a timely movie, in that respect. But, the script was very attractive.
SAM CLAFLIN: For me, personally, I’d been fortunate enough to work with Lone Scherfig, and she approached me with this script. After having such an incredible experience with her before, I knew that no matter what she gave me, I would happily jump aboard. Honestly, I fell in love with the script. I thought it was a really unique war story, set around a very poignant part of our history, but with an insight into a world that I wasn’t overly familiar with, with filmmaking at that time. I loved the beautifully poetic love story between Buckley and Catrin, and also the humor that Ambrose Hilliard brought. So, it ticked every box for me, really. And Gemma [Arterton] was already attached and I’d always wanted to work with her. It was a no-brainer.
This film has an almost fairy tale quality to it, while being set in the middle of a war, and it explores humor and tragedy in a very real, very relatable way. Was that clearly evident, when you read the script, or did that come out of fine turning during the shoot?
CLAFLIN: I thought it was all there, laid out in the text and the story, and even in the novel, which obviously came first. The world that was created and the rhythm and musicality that the script had felt almost like a musical. It felt quite uplifting and hopeful, and light and airy. It felt humorous and also quite nostalgic. It felt like a film of the time, and there’s something quite original about that. I think La La Land did it very similarly, in that it has that bounce in its step. As much as I don’t sing songs – Bill does – I felt really drawn to the musicality of it. You can’t ask for more, really.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER – The thriller is moving forward with financing from Bron Creative and Bruna Papandrea’s Made Up Stories.
Nightingale, director Jennifer Kent’s follow-up to the cult sensation Babadook, is moving forward with both financing and a cast.
Nightingale is set in Tasmania in 1825, and follows a 21-year-old Irish convict who, after witnessing the brutal murder of her husband and baby by her soldier master, takes justice into her own hands, finding an Aboriginal male tracker to enter the wilderness with her to seek revenge.
The Fall’s Aisling Franciosi will star in the thriller, along with Hunger Games grad Sam Claflin.
Damon Herriman, Ewen Leslie and Harry Greenwood will also star, with Aboriginal Djuki Mala dancer Baykali Ganambarr and East Arnhem Land indigenous model Magnolia Maymuru rounding out the cast.
Bron Creative will produce and co-finance the thriller, with Bruna Papandrea’s Made Up Stories. Nightingale will mark the first production for Made Up Stories since Papandrea parted ways with Pacific Standard, a banner that she started with actress Reese Witherspoon.
Screen Australia, Screen Tasmania and the South Australian Film Corporation are also financing.
Babadook producer Kristina Ceyton will produce the new feature, along with Papandrea. Aaron L. Gilbert, Andy Pollack, Jason Cloth and Brenda Gilbert will executive produce for Bron, with Ben Browning and Alison Cohen executive producing for FilmNation and Steve Hutensky exec producing for Made Up Stories.
Nightingale has already been sold for Australia and New Zealand to Transmission Films. WME is handling US rights, with FilmNation handling international.
VARIETY – The Santa Barbara International Film Festival has announced the lineup for its upcoming 32nd edition, including its international gala event and opening and closing films.
Running from Feb. 1-11, the festival will open with the world premiere of the documentary “Charged,” and will close on a period note with Lone Scherfig’s comedy-drama “Their Finest,” which stars Gemma Arterton, Sam Claflin and Bill Nighy.
This year’s festival will offer a wide array of films from over 50 countries, and will feature 51 world premieres and 64 US premieres, along with tributes to the year’s top talent, and panel discussions.
The festival will kick off the festival on Wednesday, Feb. 1, with a screening of “Charged,” a documentary directed by Phillip Baribeau, which chronicles the journey of chef and outdoorsman, Eduardo Garcia and his recovery after being electrocuted by 2,400 volts of electricity, miles from help in the Montana backcountry. Garcia had his hand amputated, lost ribs, muscle mass and nearly his life as a result of the incident.
The documentary is produced by Dennis Aig and Phillip Baribeau along with executive producers Teri Weinberg, Scott Ballew, Doug Ellin, Peter Hochfelder, Constance Schwartz-Morini and Michael Strahan.
Another of the festival’s segments will be an international gala, the centerpiece of which will be the French-Belgian drama “Heal the Living,” directed by Katell Quillévéré and starring Tahar Rahim, Emmanuelle Seigner, and Anne Dorval.
“Their Finest,” a British comedy scheduled for a March 24 release, will close the festival. The movie is set in Britain in 1940 and stars Gemma Arterton as a scriptwriter working on propaganda films who realizes the government sponsored work could use a “woman’s touch.” Together with another writer Buckley (Claflin), the pair set out to make an epic feature film based on the Battle of Dunkirk, starring fading movie star Ambrose Hilliard (Bill Nighy).
The full festival lineup is listed on SBIFF.org.
DEADLINE – The Santa Barbara Film Festival and EuropaCorp said today that the 32nd annual festival will close with the Lone Scherfig’s comedy drama Their Finest at the Arlington Theatre on Saturday, February 11 in advance of the film’s March 24 stateside release. The Santa Barbara Film Festival runs February 1-11.
Their Finest is written by Gaby Chiappe, based on the novel by Lissa Evans, and stars Gemma Arterton, Sam Claflin, Bill Nighy, Jack Huston and Richard E. Grant. Pic follows a female scriptwriter (Arterton) hired by the British ministry to change the female dialogue in the country’s propaganda films during World War II. Her work is soon recognized by a charming lead scriptwriter (Claflin) who teams with her to make an epic feature about the Battle of Dunkirk starring a has-been movie star Ambrose Hilliard (Nighy).
SBIFF executive director Roger Durling said in a statement, “Lone’s deeply touching film is authentic, funny and depicts the power that cinema has to bring people together and share their stories. It was the perfect choice to close this year’s festival.”
Their Finest is produced by Stephen Woolley, Amanda Posey, Finola Dwyer and Elizabeth Karlsen. Christine Langan, Ed Wethered, Robert Norris, Ivan Dunleavy, Peter Watson, Zygi Kamasa and Thorsten Schumacher serve as EPs. Pic is produced by Number 9 Films and Wildgaze Films.
Their Finest premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and also played the London Film Festival. EuropaCorp bought it out of TIFF with a seven-figure P&A commitment.