Christopher Marlowe-Centered Film from STAR WARS Producer Gary Kurtz & Director Greg Hall In the Works

According to Variety, "Star Wars" producer Gary Kurtz and British crime film director Greg Hall are teaming on an untitled feature film about iconic British poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe.

Kurtz and Hall announced the project on Wednesday, the 425th anniversary of the death of Marlowe at the age of 29. Marlowe is best remembered as William Shakespeare's friend and rival, but the film will explore the aftermath of his role as a spy for the British crown while a student at Cambridge University.

The script, by Francis Hamit, details Marlowe's career as a spy as part of the early English Secret Service, which fought a bitter war with Catholics, who wanted Elizabeth I assassinated and Mary, Queen of Scots, placed on the throne instead. Even after Mary was executed, the threat persisted and resulted in Elizabeth's seeking to control every aspect of English life and culture through, in part, an extensive system of spies and censorship.

Marlowe's own rebellion included preaching atheism and openly bragging about his own homosexuality at a time when other men were burned at the stake for it. As he was the most famous playwright of his day, he was too well-known and popular to be tried and executed publicly, so, according to the filmmakers, he was secretly assassinated by his fellow secret service agents.

"Marlowe is a tragic figure, undone by his own fatal flaws," Hamit said. "Despite the passage of time, it is a story which will resonate with today's audiences."

Hall said, "The storyline is quite dynamic. It's more about the secret underworld of spies and criminals that Kit Marlowe embraced at the same time he was social climbing with very prominent men, such as Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Walsingham, the Secretary of State and most powerful man in England. It is going to be a very exciting production and we are casting it now."

Playwright, poet. Christopher Marlowe was a poet and playwright at the forefront of the 16th-century dramatic renaissance. His works influenced William Shakespeare and generations of writers to follow. Born in Canterbury, England, in 1564. While Christopher Marlowe's literary career lasted less than six years, and his life only 29 years, his achievements, most notably the play The Tragicall History of Doctor Faustus, ensured his lasting legacy.

In a playwriting career that spanned little more than six years, Marlowe's achievements were diverse and splendid. Perhaps before leaving Cambridge he had already written Tamburlaine the Great (in two parts, both performed by the end of 1587; published 1590). Almost certainly during his later Cambridge years, Marlowe had translated Ovid's Amores(The Loves) and the first book of Lucan's Pharsalia from the Latin. About this time he also wrote the play Dido, Queen of Carthage (published in 1594 as the joint work of Marlowe and Thomas Nashe). With the production of Tamburlaine he received recognition and acclaim, and playwriting became his major concern in the few years that lay ahead. Both parts of Tamburlaine were published anonymously in 1590, and the publisher omitted certain passages that he found incongruous with the play's serious concern with history; even so, the EXTANT Tamburlaine text can be regarded as substantially Marlowe's. No other of his plays or poems or translations was published during his life. His unfinished but splendid poem Hero and Leander-which is almost certainly the finest nondramatic Elizabethan poem apart from those produced by Edmund Spenser-appeared in 1598.

Click here to read the full article!

To post a comment, you must register and login.