Olivia Colman Sam Mendes update

Source: Dillon Bryden / Rankin

Olivia Colman, Sam Mendes

Sam Mendes has commenced principal photography in the UK on Searchlight Pictures’ Empire Of Light featuring an ensemble cast led by Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward and Colin Firth.

Tom Brooke (The Crown) and Hannah Onslow (This Is Going To Hurt) have joined the previously announced cast which includes and Toby Jones, Crystal Clarke and Tanya Moodie.

Pippa Harris (1917, Call The Midwife, Penny Dreadful) and Mendes are producing through their Neal Street Productions. The story is set in and around a beautiful old cinema on the south coast of England in the 1980’s. The film will shoot in Margate and along the Kent coastline through May.

Empire Of Light is based on Mendes’ first solo original screenplay and sees the filmmaker reunite with cinematographer Roger Deakins, with whom he worked on 1917 and Skyfall.

Michael Lerman and Julie Pastor serve as executive producers and the Co-Producer is Lola Oliyide. Searchlight Pictures’ head of film production and development Katie Goodson-Thomas, director of development and production Pete Spencer and creative executive cornelia Burleigh are overseeing for the studio.