While
James Bond takes a break,
Bill Nighy and
Helena Bonham Carter have been recruited to fill the spy void, according to the
Daily Mail. The two will play MI5 agents in back-to-back thrillers created by David Hare for BBC TV that will also star Hollywood players Winona Ryder and Christopher Walken.
They will appear in the second and third parts of Hare’s
Worricker trilogy, which features Nighy as Johnny Worricker, last seen with Rachel Weisz in the first instalment,
Page Eight, two years ago. In that programme, Nighy’s Worricker uncovered secret documents that detailed the CIA’s involvement in illegal prisons around the world and how the slippery British Prime Minister — played by Ralph Fiennes — knew about them.
The two new films are called
Turks & Caicos and
Salting the Battlefield. Shooting will start in the Turks & Caicos, the tax-haven islands an hour from Miami, later this month. Filming on both dramas will continue in London, and conclude in Germany in late July; though there will be some brief additional filming in September.
He explained that in
Turks & Caicos, the jazz-loving Worricker is in exile, pursuing some of the people involved in the events of
Page Eight. ‘The islands are part of this alternative economy, where so much of the world’s wealth is hidden away, and a group of people have opted out of pathetic obligations such as paying tax.’
Helena will play a former MI5 agent in both films, with Winona as a high-powered PR in the
Turks & Caicos part of the trilogy.
Hare, who will direct both thrillers, refused to divulge which woman is the femme fatale. ‘You’ll have to wait and see,’ he said. He did, though, let slip that Walken would play a CIA agent.
UPDATE: The List has just released small synopsis’ of the two films and stated that the character
Margot Tyrrell, an ex-girlfriend of Bill Nighy’s character, appears heavily in both films. As Helena is the only female actor to be starring in both films, I think it is safe to assume this will be her character. The synopsis’ are as follows:
Turks & Caicos sees Nighy’s character having walked out of MI5 and heading out to a random destination. However, his presence on the Turks & Caicos islands lead him to be forced by the CIA to deal with an “ambiguous” group of Americans who are attending a conference on the global financial crisis. At the same time, Margot Tyrrell, an old girlfriend of his is asked to betray her London boss in order to establish an illicit connection between the prime minister and dark goings-on in the war on terror.
Salting the Battlefield sees Johnny and Margot on the run across Europe and battling with the difficulties of life in exile, prompting the former spy to realise he needs to return home to confront Prime Minister Alec Beasley.
Les Misérables
The Lone Ranger
The Young and Prodigious Spivet
Burton and Taylor
iF Poems 
