Back in the dark recesses of last year’s Empire Awards, we brought you news that Shane Meadowswas starting work on a screenplay for King Of The Gypsies, with Paddy Considine piling into the gym to play the titular character, bare-knuckle champ Bartley Dorman.
It’s something of a good news/bad news day for the project then. The bad news is that King Of The Gypsies is currently being held up by unspecified legal problems; the good that, while lawyers pore over the script, the prospect of a Meadows dream-team drew one step closer, with the ever-excellent Toby Kebbell (Dead Man’s Shoes) putting his hand up for a part.
Newly-nominated BAFTA Rising Star, Kebbell told us of his ambition to work with Meadows again. “I would love to play Bartley Gorman as a younger man. He was a phenomenal character - a ridiculous, animal of a man, with a head the size of a barrel. So hopefully we’ll do the film. Paddy will play him [Gorman] as an older man and I’ll play him younger, or Paddy will play him and I’ll play one of his brothers.”
No doubt a more brutal take on the bare-knuckle world than Snatch, a feature-length King Of The Gypsies has been a long-time dream project for Meadows, who made a short doc on the subject for Channel 4’s Battered Britain series. Watch this space for more as we get it.