1 November 2018
LIGHTS, CAMERA, AND ACTION FOR THE BOMBER BOYS
It’s happening. After months of speculation, in which the production of this hotly anticipated adaptation of Imogen Hale’s word-of-mouth sensation, The Bomber Boys, has been rumoured off more times than the relationship of its leading stars, Claudia Baxter and Nick Turner, they, and the rest of the cast, have landed in England ahead of an intense month-long shoot on the Yorkshire estate of Doverley House – the same spot where Hale’s protagonists were based during the Second World War.
For anyone who hasn’t read Hale’s novel yet – and who are you?
Where have you been? – you need to get your hands on a copy, stat, then have some tissues ready, block your diary, too, because you won’t be able to tear yourself away from this epic imagining of what really befell the vanished pathfinder crew of the now infamous ghost plane, Mabel’s Fury.
It was her timing, and the mystery of her final radio exchange with Squadron Leader Grayson, that prompted Hale to write The Bomber Boys, which she tells through Iris’s voice, as a devastating confession: one which was rejected by scores of publishers before it crossed the desk of an editor at Acorn Press, who fell under its spell and, with a miniscule budget, set it on its way to print, so breaking my unsuspecting heart, and millions of others around the globe.
Hale – who had her pick of studios vying for film rights – was, unusually, granted final approval on the script.
The question that we at The Screen are now all desperate for an answer to, is: will the movie stay true to Hale’s shattering ending?
The word is, that’s still a matter of heated discussion, and a different, much happier ever after, remains on the cards.
‘We feel we have some licence,’ says our inside source. ‘Given the mystery that still shrouds the fate of Iris Winterton and the crew, why not use this movie to explore something different?’
Because it’s not the way Hale wrote it, say we.
And what do the stars themselves think?
Claudia Baxter was giving nothing away when we caught up with her at Heathrow last week.
Pictured here, fresh off the LA red eye – understated as ever in a baseball cap, puffer, and jeans – she stopped for a chat before ducking into her waiting Land Rover.
Relaxed enough when we asked her to scale her happiness at being back on home soil (an eleven, obviously; she was on her way to see her mum), and how she felt about portraying the enigmatic Iris (delirious), she clammed up the moment we raised the matter of her character’s final, devastating reveal.
‘No,’ she said, with that smile of hers, ‘you’re not getting me on that.’
Her smile vanished at our next enquiry, into the lay of the land between her and Nick Turner, which we can only take to mean: not great.
And what will that mean for the atmosphere on set over the coming weeks?
Oh, to be a fly on Doverley’s walls …