Yeah, I don't do this a lot for every one of my favourite actors but alongside his role in the upcoming two-parter, The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, it does seem that Matthew Rhys is signing up to some very interesting UK projects.Matthew Rhys and Eileen Atkins have signed to star in The Scapegoat, a screen adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's 1957 novel.
Rhys, best known for his long-running role in Brothers and Sisters, will star in the movie version penned and to be directed by Charles Sturridge.
Billed as a psychological thriller, the script details the story of a man who meets his perfect double and takes over his life.
The project marks the debut movie production from Island Pictures, the U.K. film and TV production banner unfurled byDominic Minghella and Sarah Beardsall.
The movie is due for transmission on ITV1 in 2012, and will be followed by a worldwide theatrical distribution rollout plan to be managed by Content Media Corporation.
ITV and Content Film, Content Television and Digital have provided financial backing for the project.
The movie will be produced by Beardsall and Minghella.
Beardsall, a former high flying casting director whose resume boasts Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Talented Mr Ripleyand TV's Inspector Morse described the project as a "landmark" for Island Pictures.
"This [The Scapegoat] is our calling-card, and a statement of intent - to produce film and television with the highest of ambitions," Beardsall said.
Sturridge said it was a daunting prospect, trying to bring du Maurier's novel to life on the screen after both Alfred Hitchock and Nic Roeg had previously done adaptations of the writer's work.
"I loved the story from the moment I read it and the extraordinary mix of brilliant characters surrounding these mirror image men,” Sturridge said.
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One of the most interesting aspects of The Scapegoat in my view is the setting in rural France and the historic tensions between the resistance 'heroes' and those deemed to have collaborated. That will necessarily be missing from this new version which will surely be to its detriment - though setting the story in England does solve the difficulty the reader may have had in believing that an English University lecturer could ever have spoken French perfectly enough to pull off the impersonation of a native Frenchman among his own close family.
Daphne Du Maurier was always critical of screen adaptations her work and it was said that she only really approved of the Hitchcock 1940 version of 'Rebecca' and Nicholas Roeg's 'Don't Look Now'from 1973. Although she co-financed the 1959 version of The Scapegoat she did not like the result at all, complaining: "not one word of mine in the script and the story completely changed. I think it will be a flop." And it was.
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