MI-5 spy thriller to be turned into a movie, Peter Firth to star

Spooks: The Greater Good is scheduled to begin shooting in the first quarter of 2014, Screen Daily reports. The film will be directed by the originating director of the TV series, Bharat Nalluri (Torchwood: Miracle Day). Premiering as Spooks in the UK in 2002, the original TV series ran for ten seasons, and ended in 2011. According to Screen Daily, the premise of the movie centres around the MI5’s Head of Counterterrorism, Sir Harry Pearce, being blamed when a terrorist, Adam Qasim, escapes from MI5 custody during a routine handover. "When the disgraced Pearce disappears one night off a bridge into the Thames, his protégé Will Crombie is called in to help uncover what happened. With a devastating attack on London imminent, Will finds himself on the trail of a conspiracy that stretches from Vietnam to the Mediterranean," the premise continues. As in the original TV series, Pearce will be played by Peter Firth, 60. Firth came to prominence as a leading child actor in the 1970s, his TV credits including The Flaxton Boys and Here Come the Double Deckers. In 1973, at the age of just 20, he took the lead at Laurence Olivier's National Theatre in Peter Shaffer's stage version of Equus. Many TV and film roles followed, including The Picture of Dorian Gray (1976), Joseph Andrews (1977), Tess (1979) and The Flipside of Dominick Hide (1980). Such was the popularity of Dominick Hide that it was followed by a sequal, 1982's Another Flip For Dominick. Throughout MI-5 's television incarnation, most of the main characters changed regularly; all except Firth, who played Pearce in all 86 episodes. Other movie cast members are yet to be announced. When it began, joining Firth on MI-5 (Spooks) were Matthew Macfadyen (Ripper Street), David Oyelowo (The Butler) and Keeley Hawes (Ashes to Ashes) as, respectively, Tom, Danny and Zoe. Other main cast members over the years included Jenny Agutter (The Railway Children), Rupert Penry Jones (Whitechapel), Richard Armitage (The Hobbit), Sophia Myles (Transformers: Age of Extinction) and Lara Pulver (Sherlock). Joining Nalluri on the production side of Spooks: The Greater Good will be producers Jane Featherstone and Stephen Garrett for Kudos and Ollie Madden for Shine. The script has been written by Jonathan Brackley and Sam Vincent, both of whom worked on the TV series. www.digitaljournal.com/article/361331