The Queen Mother's Movie Request

More news on the forthcoming movie The King's Speech, which is already generating a buzz for next year's Oscars.

Starring Colin Firth and Helena Bonham-Carter (above) as the current Queen's parents, King George VI and the late Queen Elizabeth (better known to us by her widowed title of the Queen Mother), The King's Speech tells the true story of King George's speech impediment, which he and his wife worked to overcome with the help of a republican speech therapist (played by Geoffrey Rush), after the abdication of George's brother in 1936 propelled a reluctant George onto the throne.

The writer, David Seidler, who wrote the script for The King's Speech, actually began researching the story back in 1981 and even wrote to the late Queen Mother, asking her permission to tell the story of her brother-in-law's Abdication, the political crisis and her husband's journey to the throne.

"I wrote and asked her permission to tell the story in a film," Mr. Seidler told the Mail, "But it was still so raw for her - the whole business of having to relive what her husband and her family went through, with the Abdication and him becoming King. It was too much, and still painful, so she wrote and asked that the film not be made until after her death."

Bonham-Carter, who has already played two queens of England - Lady Jane Grey in 1986's Lady Jane and Anne Boleyn in 2003's Henry VIII - put an enormous amount of research into playing Queen Elizabeth, as did Colin Firth, who has spoken affectionately of the late King in interviews: "It never occurred to me the enormity of what he was up against. But he had inner steel, and that's what I had to bring out."

The King's Speech will be shown at the Toronto Film Festival next week and will be released in the United Kingdom on January 7th. 

I'm very excited about this one.

And as soon as the trailer is available on Youtube, I shall post a link.

The full Daily Mail article can be read here.