TWO OF Ireland's most successful film actors, Cillian Murphy and Brendan Gleeson, will co-star with Oscar-winning British actor Jim Broadbent in a comedy-thriller called Perrier's Bounty, which starts shooting in Dublin on November 10th.
The film reunites screenwriter and playwright Mark O'Rowe and producer Alan Moloney of Parallel Films. They collaborated on the 2003 release Intermission, which ranks as one of the most successful indigenous productions at the Irish box office, with takings in excess of €2.5 million.
Perrier's Bounty, which is set in present-day Dublin, will be directed by Ian Fitzgibbon. His latest film, the black comedy A Film With Me In Itstarring Dylan Moran and Mark Doherty, is currently on release. It is also produced by Moloney.
In the new film, Gleeson plays the title character, Perrier, a Dublin gangster desperate to retain his pride and his illegal earnings after the accidental death of one of his loyal lackeys.
Murphy takes the lead role as one of three fugitives on the run from Perrier, with Broadbent, an Oscar winner for Iris in 2001, as the long-lost father of Murphy's character.
The film is a co-production between Dublin-based Parallel Films and UK company Number 9 Films, headed by Stephen Woolley, who has produced most of Neil Jordan's films, and Elizabeth Karlsen.
The production has the backing of the Irish Film Board. It will be shot primarily on location in Dublin with additional scenes to be filmed in Co Louth and London.
Perrier's Bountywill be the fifth film to feature both Murphy and Gleeson, following Sweety Barrett, 28 Days Later, Cold Mountainand Breakfast on Pluto, which earned Murphy a nomination for best actor at the 2006 Golden Globes.
Both actors play real-life characters in films due for release next year. The Hippie Hippie Shakestars Murphy as Richard Neville, editor of the controversial magazine, Oz, which was the subject of an obscenity trial in London in 1971.
Gleeson, meanwhile, plays the lead role as Winston Churchill in Into the Stormby Irish director Thaddeus O'Sullivan. In addition, he reprises his role as "Mad-Eye" Moody in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,which opens next summer, and joins Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear in Iraq war thriller Green Zone, which is also due for release in 2009.