The King’s Speech has certainly helped Colin Firth take his pick of parts, and it seems that he’s decided he want to be a prisoner of war. THR reports that he’s sigend up to star in The Railway Man, based on Eric Lomax’s account of his war experiences and the decades after.
A British army officer, Lomax was captured by the Japanese and put to work on the ‘death railway’ linking Thailand and Burma (as depicted in The Bridge On The River Kwai). He was tortured and watched many friends and colleagues die. The Rilway Man also documents his life after the war as he tries to come to terms with his experience, setting out to find his torturers and get revenge but finding some sort of reconciliation in the process.
The movie version will start shooting next February with Jonathan Teplitzky directing. He commented, “The Railway Man is an amazing story and to have the chance to make it with Colin Firth as Eric is really the best gift any director could hope for.”