Film and TV audiences have long been fascinated by the lurid idea of a high-stakes game, one so important that, if you lose, it costs you not merely your reputation but also your life. Whether it’s the lethal confrontations between rival gunslingers in spaghetti Westerns or sci-fi dystopias like Rollerball or The Hunger Games, right up to Squid Game‘s remarkable global success, it seems that the notion of playing for keeps is one that never fails to stimulate the popular imagination.
Such is the central plot point of Lead Heads, a new British thriller due to debut on the big screen very soon. Here’s what we know about the project so far.
Plot
Plot details for Lead Heads remain scarce, but whereas Squid Game had people in desperate debt playing fatal games for the voyeuristic pleasure of bored billionaires, Lead Heads looks set to take a more pragmatic approach. A group of strangers come together for an evening, determined to play a game that is both nasty and brutish, and may end in their death, in a plot that plays on themes of corruption and avarice.
Cast
Starring in Lead Heads is Olatunji Ayofe. If the name is unfamiliar, that is because Ayofe is a newcomer to film, having graduated from the Royal Welsh College of Drama and Music just recently in 2020. Having worked primarily in theater, Ayofe can currently be seen in Silo, Apple+’s new dystopian drama about a community of people living many hundreds of meters below the ground in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The series debuted earlier this spring to largely positive reviews.
Also starring is Rupert Everett. Everett’s extensive list of credits includes The Madness of King George (1994), Shakespeare in Love (1998), and the much underrated English Civil War drama To Kill A King (2003), in which he played the feckless king who lost the war (and his head), Charles I, opposite Tim Roth in one of his most arch performances as Oliver Cromwell.
More recently, Everett won plaudits for his acting and directorial work in The Happy Prince (2018), his Oscar Wilde biopic in which he played the lead. Last year, he guest starred opposite Samantha Morton in Starz’ miniseries about the Medici family, The Serpent Queen.
Alongside Ayofe and Everett is Tom Felton, whose career has quietly flourished since his ubiquitous performances alongside Daniel Radcliffe as Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter franchise. After supporting roles in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) and Chadwick Boseman’s film Message From The King (2016), Felton garnered critical praise for his work as a Royal Air Force pilot shot down over enemy territory in Second World War drama The Forgotten Battle (2020).
Last year he appeared in Save The Cinema, a retelling of the real-life campaign to save a historic cinema in rural Wales from closure in the 1990s, opposite Academy Award nominees Jonathan Pryce and Samantha Morton. His latest project, the drama Canyon Del Muerto, tells the story of pioneering female archaeologist Ann Axtell Morris; it is currently in post-production, with Felton taking on the role of producer in addition to starring in the movie.
Derek Jacobi also appears in an unspecified role. One of the elder statesmen of British stage and screen, the Emmy and Tony Award-winning actor has nothing left to prove these days but is as active as ever. In the past few years, Jacobi has been particularly busy in film, with supporting roles in Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express (2017), Tolkien (2019), and with Dame Judi Dench in Allelujah (2022).
Recent TV work has included guest appearances opposite David Tennant and Michael Sheen in Prime’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens (2019); as Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor in The Crown (2019); and as Erasmus Fry in another critically successful Neil Gaiman adaptation, Netflix’s The Sandman, last year. He is due to star opposite Matthew Modine and Monty Python alum John Cleese in the existential drama The Martini Shot, which is now in post-production.
Other cast members include British comedy veteran Mark Williams (The Fast Show, Harry Potter) and Luke Newberry (Sherlock, The Singapore Grip).
Release Date
Lead Heads‘ director is Giles Borg, perhaps best known for his 2011 comedy Flutter, which starred Billy Zane, Laura Fraser, and Ricky Tomlinson. The script was written by Patrick Makin, who has primarily worked in televisual and film comedy, most notably the 2017 comedy Happy Birthday Toby Simpson.
The production was yet another of the many film projects to be disrupted by the Covid pandemic, but filming finally took place in London in early 2021. A release date has yet to be announced.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
