David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike are African Royalty in A United Kingdom

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Jack Reacher stars David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike are reuniting for the film A United Kingdom.

Oyelowo will play Seretse Khama, a royal exiled from Bechuanaland by the British in 1951 after he controversially married a white English office clerk played by Pike.

He was an Oxford-educated African king, while she was a white Englishwoman working as a clerk at Lloyd’s of London. Now their 1948 marriage, which caused scandal in Apartheid-stricken South Africa and the British protectorate of Bechuanaland (later Botswana), is to be the subject of a new period drama starring Britain’s David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike.

Oyelowo is in talks to play Seretse Khama, who in 1965 became independent Botswana’s first president. He was also kgosi (king) of the Bamangwato people, having been crowned at the age of four in 1925. Pike is in line to star as Ruth Williams, who would go on to be the first lady of Botswana between 1966 and 1980.

The marriage was vehemently opposed by the racist South African government, which bullied Britain’s ruling Labour party into exiling the royal couple from Bechuanaland in 1951. The king’s uncle and sometime regent, Tshekedi Khama, also tried and failed to have his nephew deposed. Williams, meanwhile, proved suprisingly popular in Africa.

Titled A United Kingdom, the film has secured up-and-coming British film-maker Amma Asante to direct. The London-born director and screenwriter is known for the much-praied 2013 drama Belle, starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tom Wilkinson and Matthew Goode, which details the life of a mixed-race daughter of a British Royal Navy officer living in 18th-century England. She will work from a screenplay by Five Minutes of Heaven’s Guy Hibbert.

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“Amma and Rosamund are two of the most exciting talents working in film today,” said Oyelowo, also a producer on the drama. “I’ve worked with both of them before and so my excitement about them joining A United Kingdom stems from a knowledge of just how inspiring they are to work with and how much daring and beauty they will bring to this epic love story.”

Both Oyelowo and Pike are coming off awards season buzz for their films Selma and Gone Girl, respectively. Pike was nominated in the best supporting actress category for her turn as a missing woman in David Fincher’s adaptation of the bestselling Gillian Flynn novel, while Oyelowo was considered unfortunate to miss out on an acting nod for his turn as Martin Luther King Jr in Ava DuVernay’s historical drama.

 

[flickchick85]

Took me a minute to recall that they were both in Jack Reacher. My how their careers have changed since then, haha.

But yeah, this sounds like it's got a lot of potential.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Love me some Rosamund Pike, so I am definitely in.

 

[Hurm...]

Pike's good in the right role - her performance in Gone Girl was fantastic. But, I would be lying if I said she wasn't utterly terrible in Jack Reacher. I guess for a film like that, though, no one is looking to bring their A game.

 

[chamber-music]

Cast update

Jack Davenport (Pirates Of The Caribbean, Kingsman & The Talented Mr Ripley), Tom Felton (Harry Potter & Planet Of The Apes, Laura Carmichael (Downton Abbey), Arnold Oceng (The Good Lie) and Nicholas Lyndhurst (Only Fools and Horses) round out the cast.

 

[Lencho01]

I still need to check out Belle.

 

[Fallen Angel]

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/01/29/david-oyelowo-rosamund-pike-united-kingdom

Gear up for the greatest love story you’ve never heard of. It’s the late 1940s and Prince Seretse Khama, the heir to the throne of Botswana has fallen in love and married a young, white English girl named Ruth Williams. Their interracial love affair is so scandalous, Seretse and his bride must spend six years in exile in London, banned from Khama’s own country because he married a white woman.

Selma star David Oyelowo first discovered the couple’s story in 2010 when he read Susan Williams’ book The Colour Bar and he’s been on an obsessed path ever since to get it turned into a movie. “I was so struck by the level of challenge they faced simply for falling in love with each other that I became completely intoxicated with it,” says Oyelowo who plays Seretse. “I also realized in reading the story I had never seen an African love story of this cinematic scope. It spoke to me as an African, as a man, as a romantic.”



So, for six years, Oyelowo worked tirelessly to turn The Colour Bar into A United Kingdom, written by Guy Hibbert (Five Minutes of Heaven) and directed by Belle helmer Amma Asante. British distributor Pathe (Selma) financed and will release it internationally.


In addition to collecting producers during every film Oyelowo shot (Rick McCallum from Red Tails, Brunson Green from The Help), he had to recruit Pike to play his bride. That opportunity came when Oyelowo was on set in Uganda and discovered via the trades that Pike’s upcoming movie, The Deep Blue Good-By had been shuttered suddenly after her costar Christian Bale tore up the ligaments in his knee.
“I went straight to my computer and I sent her images of these two people with the note ‘Take a look. Tell me what you think,’” he says. “She wrote me back the most impassioned e-mail: ‘I don’t know who these people are. I don’t know what they’ve done with their lives. But I’m so moved by them, tell me more.’”



Oyelowo’s fervor over this couple and their story is certainly contagious, but his own relationship to them is likely rooted in the fact that he found some echoes between his life and Seretse’s: he also is from his own royal family in Nigeria and is married to white actress Jessica Oyelowo.



“Yes, I’m married to a white lady who I love deeply. We haven’t had the struggle they’ve had, but I feel so blessed that I live in an era where me being married to whom I’m married to isn’t illegal or frowned upon, literally, by nations in addition to individual people,” says Oyelowo. “Let’s not be naive. There are people out there who don’t love a black person and a white person being married, but it’s certainly not what Seretse and Ruth experienced. This film is a celebration of two people I deem so brave for doing what in my life, I’ve been able to take for granted.”



And it seems the love between Seretse and Ruth was able to move disparate cultures and countries. “They ended up reshaping their nation through their love,” adds Oyelowo. “Botswana is a different country for the fact that these two people got married. It has a different relationship to race, partly because of them. That in and of itself is miraculous.”
Pathe plans to take A United Kingdom to the Berlin Film Festival and is anticipating a fall release.

 

[kvz5]

I'm in! This and "Loving" will be a good double feature.

 

[Dr. Evil]

Their son Ian is the current president of Botswana, so I am sure he'll get front row tickets to the World Premiere, probably either in London or in Botswana.

Finally, a film about an African leader not named Nelson Mandela, which has not happened since the Last King of Scotland.

 

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New movie still

 

[Octoberist]

Looks good!

 

[Lencho01]

Cool.

 

[Fallen Angel]

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[Dr. Evil]

Good trailer, but it got me to thinking:

- Britain still believed that having an Empire in the late 1940's was still a good thing? Even after they had just defeated the Third Reich?

 

[Fallen Angel]

Yes there was some backwards people like that. Heck there are some till this day.

Although I say that some of the things maybe slightly exaggerated even though its' based on true event's.

 

[chamber-music]

Good trailer, but it got me to thinking:

- Britain still believed that having an Empire in the late 1940's was still a good thing? Even after they had just defeated the Third Reich?

The problem wasn't really that some in Britain were pro-empire or racist. The problem was that Britain was heavily in debt and Botswana's southern border neighbor is Apartheid South Africa.

Interracial marriage was banned under the apartheid system, South Africa could not afford to have an interracial couple ruling just across their northern border in Bechuanaland (Botswana). The South African's pressured the British to have Khama removed from his chieftainship.

Britain’s Labour government was heavily in debt from World War II at the time. The country could not afford to lose cheap South African gold and uranium supplies (with the cold war looming). There was also a fear that South Africa might take more direct action against Bechuanaland, through economic sanctions or a military incursion. If South African lead an incursion into Bechuanaland then it would of sparked another war that Britain could not afford or want.

The racist British government of the time certainly did Seretse and Ruth wrong but framing the story as simple evil racist empire does evil empire racist stuff is an over simplification of actual events.

Form the government of the times point of view. Is the Khama marriage really worth the potential international conflict that may come if they return to Botswana?

 

[Dr. Evil]

I wonder if their son, Ian Khama (the current President of Botswana) will attend the world premiere.

I did read that World War II was the beginning of the end of colonial empires, and that is true. Look at how many Caribbean and African nations came out of the British Empire. Also, the number of countries that came out of the French Empire in Africa. Although it did take the Portuguese until the 1970's for it's Colonial empire to end. I know that Indonesia came out of the Dutch Empire and that Spain had no empire left. The DR Congo came out of the Belgians.

What exactly is the current status today of British overseas possessions? Are they like the American territories? The American territories get varying degrees of freedom

 

[Fallen Angel]

They're known as Commonwealth countries by and large. It's group made up of former British colonies.

The only bit of foreign land that Britain has claim o now is the Falkland Island's. But the Argentinians dispute that.

 

[Dr. Evil]

Doesn't the British still own some Islands in the Caribbean?

 

[chamber-music]

Britain was broke after ww2 and couldn't really afford the empire and there was a generational shift in different attitudes towards that stuff. Baby boomers had no desire to continue supporting independence movements overseas.

Britain has overseas territories called crown dependencies. Mostly they are independent islands under British protection. The Falklands and Gibraltar are the most well known.

The commonwealth is independent former colony countries that have a shared association. The queen is head of state of a number of commonwealth countries. Not every country that is a member was a former British controlled territory and any nation can join if they fit the criteria. South Sudan has expressed interest in joining for example.

 

[Lencho01]

Looks good.

 

[CaptainWagner]

Finally saw the trailer for this, it looks great! I'm very interested to see how it compares to Loving, with them both addressing similar themes and issues.

Also, don't read the Youtube comment section for the trailer. It's fairly disturbing.

 

[Lencho01]

'A United Kingdom': Film Review | TIFF 2016

‘A United Kingdom’ Review: Love, Race, and Politics Are a Messy Mix | TIFF 2016

 

[Lencho01]

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