Is there any other director out there with a resume as diverse as Michael Winterbottom? It's hard to marry up the same guy who gave us hard hitting documentaries like The Road to Guantanamo, with uncomfortable genre romances like Code 46 and The Killer Inside Me. His work is always interesting and challenging, but he seems to be at his absolute best when working alongside British comic, Steve Coogan. The two have paired up three times already, with 24 Hour Party People, Tristram Shandy, and most recently on The Trip.
Their next project, The King of Soho, will have Coogan playing real life pornographer/real estate magnate Paul Raymond who amassed his considerable fortune by buying up property and opening the influential strip club Revuebar. With production set to get underway, theDailyMail reports that Anna Friel(Pushing Daisies), Imogen Poots(Fright Night), and Tamsin Egerton(Chalet Girl) have come aboard to play the most important women in Raymond's life.
Friel will be Raymond's wife, Jean, who stayed with him for 23 years until they divorced in 1974. Poots, who had a fantastic 2011 with both Fright Night and Jane Eyre, will play Raymond's troubled daughter, Debbie, who by most accounts was his closest confidante over the years. She had her own personal demons, however, and tragically died of a drug overdose in 1992, just as he was beginning to turn control over his empire to her. Egerton will play Fiona Richmond, the fashion model/actress who became Raymond's mistress towards the end of his marriage to Jean.
As we've seen before, when Coogan rarely disappoints when given a meaty role to bite into, and this appears to be another one of those opportunities.
