Sky & Amazon Launch Britannia Drama – Kelly Reilly, Zoë Wanamaker, David Morrissey To Star
Today it has been announced that Sky are teaming up with Amazon for the first time, to bring a new drama called Britannia to the screen.
The drama, set in 43 A.D., follows the Roman invasion of the British Isles, “as the Roman imperial army returns to crush the Celtic heart of Britannia – a mysterious land ruled by wild warrior women and powerful druids who can channel the powerful forces of the underworld…”
Kelly Reilly (True Detective, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) is set to star as Celtic warrior Kerra, with Zoë Wanamaker (Mr Selfridge, My Family, Doctor Who) playing her arch-rival Antedia, who must set aside their differences to battle the onslaught from Roman general Aulus Plautius, played by the brilliant David Morrissey (The Walking Dead, Extant, Doctor Who). Additional cast includes Hugo Speer (The Musketeers, The Full Monty), Ian McDiarmid (aka Star Wars’s Palpatine), Nikolaj Lie Kaas (The Killing), Stanley Weber (Outlander, Borgia), and Eleanor Worthington-Cox (The Enfield Haunting, Cucumber).
Edge of Tomorrow & Spectre’s Jez Butterworth has written the script with Tom Butterworth (Fortitude, Tin Star) and Richard McBrien (Spooks, Merlin). Sky’s head of drama Anne Mensah described it as “an incredible drama that is entertaining and emotional but also asks important questions about what drives men and women to stand and fight. This is a battle for the heart of Britain like you’ve never seen before.”
Mensah, who commisioned the series for Sky went on to call it the “most ambitious” show Sky have ever commissioned, and talked about how teaming up with international partners helps bring these sort of large scale project to fruition, saying “In a noisy TV world, it is huge shared creative ambition which will support the biggest and boldest projects and ensure they cut through and reach the global audiences they deserve.”
Britannia is produced by Rick McCallum (Star Wars) and executive produced by Vertigo Films’ James Richardson (Monsters, Bronson) with Pippa Harris and Nicolas Brown from Neal Street Productions (Penny Dreadful, Call the Midwife) and Anne Thomopolous (Rome, Band of Brothers). The show will shoot in both Prague and Wales, and will be a 10 part event series airing 2017 on Sky Atlantic in the UK, and Amazon Prime in the US.
