Leicester Square

I have been working on an ambitious new screenplay called Leicester Square for over a year and it's now ready to go.  The story was inspired by an intriguing image.  A man working alone 400 hundred feet above London, perched precariously on a ramshackle platform above the cross on top of St Paul's cathedral.  The man was Thomas Horner, a great panorama artist based in London in the early part of the nineteenth century.  The story behind his "studio in the clouds" was intriguing and I had to dig deeper into why a man would spend half a year almost freezing to death during a vicious winter to paint a picture of London?   Then I discovered a painting created by Horner of the inside of his own panorama theatre (thumbnail glimpse provided above). The final work covered 24,000 square feet of canvass and viewers climbed to a viewing platform via an "ascending chamber" (the world's first passenger lift) seven stories high, to see a perfect smoke-free panorama of London.  [Note, the biggest IMAX cinema in the world today is some 11,000 square feet - and most are typically less than half this size].  This was art on an enormous scale and it was in its day - the greatest show on earth, with thousands queuing to see London "as God alone sees it".  Leicester Square is based upon the true story of Thomas Horner and his contemporaries, their struggle to create the great London panorama and the passions that drove them to distraction.  I am working on the finalised pitch and presentation pack for Cannes.  The script has been a monster to write, but the central story of staggering human endeavour and a love lost then found is, I hope, compelling and universal.  Someone who's view I value, described it helpfully as "quite good", which is for me, for now, enough.  More information and images to follow in the coming weeks on Wave Your Arms.  If you would like to find out more about the project, contact me or Tony Allen at Big Time Pictures.