IFC brings Brighton Rock to US market

From DHD – An adaptation of Graham Greene’s classic 1939 novel is heading for U.S. theaters, courtesy of IFC Films. IFC has acquired the U.S. rights to Rowan Joffe’s directing debut, Brighton Rock – Joffe, best known for scripting 28 Weeks Later and The American, penned the adaptation himself. Hailing from the BBC and UKFC, and produced by Paul Webster (Eastern Promises) and Paul Ritchie (Nowhere Boy), the film stars Helen Mirren (Red), Sam Riley (Control), Andrea Riseborough (Never Let Me Go), and John Hurt (Immortals).

President of IFC Films Jonathan Sehring said, “Brighton Rock is a brilliant update of a noir classic that manages to be thrilling and beautiful.”

Brighton Rock will hit US theaters summer 2011.

Book Jacket:

“Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him…”

Graham Greene’s chilling exposé of violence and gang warfare in the pre-war underworld is a classic of its kind.

Pinkie, the teenage gangster, is devoid of compassion or human feeling, despising weakness of the spirit or of the flesh. Responsible for the razor slashes that killed Kite and also for the death of Hale, he is the embodiment of calculated evil. As a Catholic, however, he is convinced that his retribution does not lie in human hands.

He is therefore not prepared for Ida Arnold, Hale’s avenging angel. Ida, whose allegiance is with life, the here and now, has her own ideas about the circumstances surrounding Hale’s death. For the sheer joy of it she takes up the challenge of bringing the infernal Pinkie to an earthly kind of justice.