Box office: Data - The critical view - Bad moon rising

At this year's Berlinale, I found myself pitching an idea for a script I'll probably never write to an old friend who is now a leading British producer. I felt a bit guilty: this was supposed to be his one non-working lunch of the festival, and there was me turning all Brutus on him. But he had the grace to sound interested as I enthused about the main character, a beautiful, smart, cynical, high-born woman who mistreats her daughter and steals her best friend's husband.