DNA takes a flyer with 'Sweeney'
Rough, tough and hard enough to rollerskate on (to use one of the show's lines), "The Sweeney" ran for four seasons on ITV in the mid-1970s, and was even successful enough to spawn two spinoff movies.
Now DNA Films, the U.K. venture backed by Fox Searchlight, has teamed up with cult writer-director Nick Love, his production outfit Vertigo Films and the show's original creator, Ian Kennedy Martin, to create a 21st-century version of "The Sweeney" for the bigscreen.
The movie is being developed to shoot next May.
The original "Sweeney," produced by Euston Films for Thames TV, starred John Thaw and Dennis Waterman as a veteran detective and his younger sidekick in the London police unit dedicated to fighting violent crime. Sweeney, short for Sweeney Todd, is cockney rhyming slang for the unit, which was known as the Flying Squad.
These days, shows about hard-bitten cops who wouldn't be mistaken for choirboys in a dark alley are a staple of TV schedules, but "The Sweeney" pretty much invented the genre. Back then, its gritty wit and realism were genuinely shocking to viewers raised on the decent coppers of "Dixon of Dock Green" and "Z Cars."
Although much about the show -- the fashions, the hairstyles, the masculine lack of political correctness -- virtually defines the 1970s, DNA topper Andrew Macdonald is convinced that the time is right for a revival.
"We want to make it as a contemporary police story, not a period piece, but just as violent and sweary as the original," he says. "It's about an older cop who's in the second half of a career that he has spent in relentless pursuit of the job, grappling with how the world has changed."
The project certainly looks like a natural fit for Love, who established himself with the low-budget, testosterone-fueled dramas "The Football Factory" (about soccer hooligans) and "The Business" (about expat London crooks in Spain).
DNA brought the project to Love, and was happy to let him make it with his regular producer Allan Niblo at Vertigo. Macdonald, who runs DNA along with production chief Allon Reich, sees that as another example of the company's flexibility, acting as a bridge between the ultra-indie, low-budget ethos of Vertigo and the worldwide distribution machine of Fox.
The versatility of DNA's creative and financial approach is amply demonstrated by the diverse slate of its movies that Fox will release in the coming months.
This ranges from the screen version of Tony-winning play "The History Boys" and the Cate Blanchett/Judi Dench vehicle "Notes on a Scandal," which DNA boarded as a co-financier, to Danny Boyle's sci-fi thriller "Sunshine" and Kevin Macdonald's dramatic debut "The Last King of Scotland," which DNA was much more directly involved in producing.
DNA also started shooting last week on "28 Weeks Later," the sequel to Boyle's 2003 hit "28 Days Later," with a view to releasing the movie as soon as next May. Spanish helmer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo is directing, with a cast including Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Catherine McCormack and Jeremy Renner, plus the wonderfully named Mackintosh Muggleton as the 12-year-old kid at the heart of the story.
After Blighty was devastated by a mystery virus in the first movie, this picks up the story a few months later when the U.S. army moves in to help recolonize the British Isles.
