Lily James (“Cinderella”) and Oscar winner Christopher Plummer (“Beginners”) are set to star in “The Kaiser’s Last Kiss” for Film House Germany’s Egoli Tossell Film, which has tapped David Leveaux to direct the movie.
Written by Simon Burke and based on the novel by Alan Judd, “The Kaiser’s Last Kiss” is an Egoli Tossell Film and Ostar Enterprises production. Judy Tossell and Lou Pitt are producing, while Bill Haber and Phil Geier are executive producing. Lotus Entertainment will introduce the project to foreign buyers at Cannes.
In “The Kaiser’s Last Kiss,” notions of duty and love of country are tested against the power of love itself. The 1940 invasion of Holland brings the Nazis face to face with their former monarch, Kaiser Wilhelm (Plummer), who was exiled to the Netherlands in 1917. In an effort to thwart the Nazis, the Dutch resistance work covertly with Winston Churchill in inserting an agent into the Kaiser’s household. A lethally dangerous love affair ignites between a German officer and a young Jewish Dutch woman (James) with consequences that neither they nor the Kaiser himself could have foreseen. As the Nazis race to identify and eliminate the agent to block the potentially disastrous defection of their former Emperor to England, the threads of history conspire with the recklessness of the heart to dumbfound them.
“In David Leveaux, our film has found the perfect director to wring every last ounce of drama from this very special script. Audiences will rarely have seen a character quite like the Kaiser, brought to life by one of cinema’s great treasures Christopher Plummer — combined with the sensational Lily James. We look forward to taking this passionate spy thriller to Cannes and beyond,” said Judy Tossell of Egoli Tossell.
Plummer currently co-stars alongside Al Pacino in Dan Fogelman’s “Danny Collins,” and he’ll next be seen in Atom Egoyan’s “Remember,” which was also co-produced by Egoli Tossell.
James recently starred in Disney’s “Cinderella,” which has grossed over $500 million worldwide. She’ll soon be seen in the Weinstein Company/BBC production of “War and Peace” as well as Burr Steers’ “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” which will be released by Screen Gems on Feb. 19, 2016. She’s also in negotiations for the female lead opposite Ansel Elgort in Edgar Wright’s “Baby Driver.”
Leveaux is best known for his work on Broadway, having been nominated for a Tony Award five times for his work on plays by Eugene O’Neill and Tom Stoppard.
James is represented by UTA and Tavistock Wood, while Plummer is repped by ICM Partners, Markham, Froggatt, Irwin and The Pitt Group. Leveaux is repped by CAA.
“The Kaiser’s Last Kiss” is the latest addition to the Film House Germany/Egoli Tossell Film slate which includes Jalmari Helander’s “Big Game,” Jon Baird’s “Ivanhoe” and “Mandela’s Children” from Kweku Mandela and Kemal Akhtar.
Lotus Entertainment’s current slate includes: Tom Tykwer’s “A Hologram For a King” starring Tom Hanks; Scott Hicks’ “Fallen”; Sacha Gervasi’s “November Criminals” with Chloë Grace Moretz and Ansel Elgort; Tanya Wexler’s “Replicas” starring Keanu Reeves; Luis Prieto’s “Kidnap” starring Halle Berry; and Shekhar Kapur’s epic adventure “Tiger’s Curse,” based on the first in a series of New York Times bestselling novels.