Peter Morgan has taken his “Blair trilogy” from The Deal to The Queen — and now, Variety reports, he’s preparing the third installment.
Morgan is on a hot streak right now — aside from the critical hosannas enjoyed by The Queen, his recent credits include the well-received The Last King of Scotland, the upcoming The Other Boleyn Girl, and a rewrite on the State of Play remake we keep talking about — but he’s taking care not to lose sight of a longstanding goal to complete his planned trilogy about Tony Blair’s tenure as Britain’s prime minister.
The Queen, as you might recall, looked at Blair’s ascension to the office of Prime Minister through the lens of Princess Diana’s death, and how its aftermath affected the British public and the royal family. This time around, the focus will be British-American relations. From the article:
The movie will focus on Blair’s reaction to the handover of power from Clinton, a natural liberal ally, to Bush, who came from the other end of the political spectrum.
Morgan initially considered tackling the more obvious drama surrounding the run-up to the Iraq war, when Blair fatally compromised his own premiership through his wholehearted support for Bush’s invasion plans. But in the end Morgan decided that the roots of those events lay in Blair’s difficult adjustment to the transition from Clinton to Bush a few years earlier.
Michael Sheen, who played Blair in both The Deal and The Queen, is expected to reprise his role for the third film, which is scheduled to start shooting next April.
Source: Variety
