EXCLUSIVE: Roger Michell’s last movie, Elizabeth, about British monarch Queen Elizabeth II, has sold around the world for Embankment Films.
Following the pre-sales we revealed with A24 for the U.S. and Signature for the UK, pacts have also been set in in France (Originals Factory), Germany (Square One), Benelux (The Searchers), Switzerland (Ascot Elite), Italy (Lucky Red), Spain (Vertice), Scandinavia (NonStop), ANZ (Madman) and Canada (Mongrel).
Also picking up the movie are Japan (Tohokushinsha), Israel (United King), Singapore (Shaw), Middle East (Front Row), Portugal (Nos Lusomundo) and South Africa (Empire).
Signature will release the film in the UK on June 3, 2022, to coincide with the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
The film was described by BAFTA winner Michell (The Duke, Notting Hill) as “a truly cinematic mystery tour, up and down the decades; playful, poetic, funny, disobedient, ungovernable, affectionate, inappropriate and mischievous but, in awe”.
The filmmaker completed the movie just days before he passed away last year.
Working with editor Joanna Crickmay (Tea With the Dames) and archivist Emily Thomas, Michell uncovered unique archive footage of the Queen, which we are told drives an intimate perspective of the monarch, without talking heads and commentators.
Michell previously said: “She has been our constant. I think she’s drilled into our subconscious. She’s like the world’s biggest movie star, and you don’t have to be a royalist to be amazed by her.”
Pic is produced by Kevin Loader of Free Range Films (The Personal History of David Copperfield) and five-time Oscar nominee George Fenton (Dangerous Liaisons) composes the film’s score. Peter Touche is an executive producer for Ingenious which provided financing. Embankment are also exec-producers and arranged financing.