Gemma Arterton News

Critics have stopped by The Critic, the dark and sharp-witted new thriller starring stage and screen icon, Ian McKellen. Read the reviews!

BroadwayWorld sat down with Sir Ian McKellen about taking on the role of Jimmy Erskine, in The Critic. We discussed period drama, how performing for movies compares to live theatre and what it was like playing a critic as a performer.

Recently, we had the chance to speak with the director of The Critic, Anand Tucker. We discussed how he first got started in the world of cinema, what it is like to be adapting a work like The Critic and even his thoughts on critics in the modern age versus the 1930s.

The Irish writer Brendan Behan described critics as “eunuchs in a harem; they know how it’s done, they’ve seen it done every day, but they’re unable to do it themselves”. Quite a damning characterisation. Anand Tucker introduces an ageing critic, Jimmy Erskine, whose name and ruthlessness are the stuff of legends. When a struggling actress becomes entangled in his web, Erskine drags both of them down a dangerous path. Loosely based on Anthony Quinn’s novel Curtain Call but featuring a different premise, The Critic is a solid, witty black comedy before seamlessly shifting into a chic crime drama.

The Critic, the upcoming thriller starring Ian McKellen, will be released on September 13, 2014 in North America. Greenwich Entertainment has acquired the rights for the film, which is based on the novel Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn.​​​​​​​ The movie is set to premiere in the UK on the same day. 

The trailer for The Critic, the upcoming dark and sharp-witted thriller starring Ian McKellen, has just dropped. The film features an all-star British cast including McKellen, Gemma Arterton, Mark Strong, Ben Barnes, Alfred Enoch, Romola Garai and Lesley Manville.

In an interview with BBC News, Sean Foley said: “They’ve got to be a great comic actor, of which we have very many. They’ve got to be of that shape-shifting kind of quality.'

Stanley Kubrick's iconic work will be adapted for the first time ever, when a world premiere stage production of his timeless classic Dr. Strangelove opens in the West End in Autumn 2024.

Nica Burns has announced a new production of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, directed by Josie Rourke, starring Leah Harvey as Rosalind, Rose Ayling-Ellis as Celia, Alfred Enoch as Orlando and with Martha Plimpton in the role of Jaques.

Brown Boys Swim is the winner of the Popcorn Writing Award 2022.  Written by Karim Khan (a recipient of Riz Ahmed’s Left Handed Films and Pillars Fund inaugural fellowship and an alumnus of the The North Wall’s ArtsLab programme), this lyrical coming-of-age tale looks at the pressures that surround young Muslim men today. 

The BBC and Shakespeare's Globe have teamed up to celebrate the Globe's 25th Anniversary, broadcasting three films on BBC Four and BBC iPlayer. The productions span across the years with Michelle Terry in Twelfth Night (2021), Emma Rice's A Midsummer Night's Dream (2016) and Gemma Arterton in The Duchess of Malfi (2014).

From Thursday 10th March 2022, schools, universities, and educational institutions all over the world will be able to see the digital streaming of Walden - the fresh and ambitious debut play by Amy Berryman. Walden stars Gemma Arterton, Fehinti Balogun and Lydia Wilson and is directed by Ian Rickson. 

WhatsOnStage today announced that Jodie Prenger and Tom Read Wilson will host the 22nd Annual WhatsOnStage Awards. They are joined by presenters Chris Bush, Graziano Di Prima, Omari Douglas, James Graham, David Harewood, Frances Mayli McCann, Stephanie McKeon, Drew McOnie, Daniel Monks, Tracy Ann Oberman, Johannes Radebe, and more.

“The King’s Man,” the prequel to the previous two movies in the “Kingsman” film franchise—“Kingsman: The Secret Service” and “Kingsman: The Golden Circle”—unfolds the origins of the very first independent intelligence agency through a story that features a collection of history’s worst tyrants. The score is by Matthew Margeson and Dominic Lewis.

Shakespeare's Globe has announced the relaunch of their video-on-demand streaming service, Globe Player. The original platform was the first of its kind and the upgrade enables audiences to subscribe or pay-on-demand for world-class Shakespeare productions to devices internationally. 

“Measure of a Man” opens with FKA twigs' cinematic and arresting vocals. FKA twigs then lures us into a hypnotic RnB fuelled beat before handing over to Central Cee who adds his dynamic touch as he floats across the track. “The King’s Man” is directed by Matthew Vaughn and stars Ralph Fiennes and Gemma Arterton. It's released theaters December 22.

After returning from a year-long Moon mission, Cassie, a NASA botanist, finds herself in a remote cabin in the woods, where her estranged twin sister, Stella, a former NASA architect, has found a new life with climate activist Bryan. Old wounds resurface as the sisters attempt to pick up the pieces of the rivalry that broke them apart.

Alan Stacey has today announced that he will be stepping down as Executive Director of Headlong in March 2022 after six years with the company. During his tenure Stacey has helped bring some of Headlong's most critically acclaimed work to over 900,000 people in theatres across the UK.

And they're off! London theatres have been open for several weeks now, and the reviews once again are coming hard and fast as a glance at this very site will confirm. Quick off the mark have been the smaller-sized shows: solo plays like Cruise or Harm or a three-person West End entry like Amy Berryman's Walden (though that title was beset by pre-opening dramas of its own, more of which below). But as the big musicals prepare their own re-emergence on to a scene marked out already by the producer Sonia Friedman's RE:EMERGE season (of which Walden is the first of three to open), excitement is in the air. The question now remains as to who, precisely, the audience is likely to be for these shows, given the difficulty for many in travelling to the UK.

Amy Berryman's Walden, which is currently playing at the Harold Pinter Theatre, has announced that it will pause performances this evening, May 25, after a COVID threat arose within the company.