AFM: Diane Keaton, Brendan Gleeson to Find Love in ‘Hampstead’

Fresh from chasing feminist protestors, including Meryl Streep, across central London as a police detective in Suffragette, Irish actor and Emmy winner Brendan Gleeson (The Guard, Calvary) is set to head to one of the British capital’s more peaceful neighborhoods with Oscar-winner Diane Keaton in an upcoming romance.

Set in the leafy London suburb of the same name, Hampstead – which will begin pre-production early next year – is inspired by true-life events and is being developed and produced by U.K.-based banner Ecosse Films, which was behind the 2009 John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy.

BAFTA-winning filmmaker Joel Hopkins (Last Chance Harvey) will direct from a screenplay by Oscar-nominated writer Robert Festiger (In the Bedroom), with Ecosse’s Robert Bernstein and Douglas Rae producing.

Alison Thompson and Mark Gooder’s new outfit, Cornerstone Films, which was founded in May of this year, will handle international sales, including North America, and will introduce the project to buyers at the upcoming American Film Market in Los Angeles.

The story sees Keaton playing American widow Emily Walters, who one day witnesses a man on Hampstead’s famed Heath being attacked by a group of professional thugs. The man in question, Donald Horner, played by Gleeson, has been living on the outskirts of the woods for years but now finds his lifestyle under threat from property developers using heavy-handed tactics to try to remove him. The two form an unlikely alliance as the battle escalates.

Keaton is represented by WME and Gleeson by Teri Hayden of The Agency and Larry Taube of Principal Entertainment.

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