Hallelujah! Chris Addison to direct a comedy about Handel's Messiah | With Ralph Fiennes playing the composer

Hallelujah! Chris Addison to direct a comedy about Handel's Messiah

With Ralph Fiennes playing the composer

Chris Addison is to direct a comedy movie about George Frederick Handel, with Ralph Fiennes playing the composer.

To be shot early next year, the film is entitled Hallelujah! and revolves around his Messiah oratorio and its chaotic first performance.

Hollywood website Deadline, which broke the news of the project, describes it as being ‘in the vein of Shakespeare In Love’. 

It gives the synopsis: ’Set in a riotous 18th Century London and Dublin, the farce follows the drink-sodden and cantankerous Handel who is a forgotten man to all but his whip-smart valet. Worse still, he has lost his inspiration to compose.’

However, he is moved to write his most famous piece on after hearing the singing of actress Susannah Cibber. The piece is first performed in Ireland in 1742, where Handel must deal with ‘the sectarian politics of Dublin’s choirs, the stupidity of English overlords, and the hypocritical morals of the day’.

Addison has previously directed 13 episodes of Veep, having previously starred in its British inspiration The Thick Of It, and makes his feature film debut with the forthcoming female-led remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, now renamed The Hustle and starring Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson.

Hallelujah! was written by  Jon Croker, who penned The Woman In Black 2 and  Nicholas Adams, who wrote 2003’s The Boys & Girl from County Clare.

The movie – whose backers include BBC Films and the BFI – will be touted to buyers at the Cannes film festival.

Published: 27 Apr 2018

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