We're more used to seeing Mark Rylance on screen in dramas such as Bridge Of Spies and Dunkirk. But he'll be tapping his funny bone for a new, based-on-truth tale called The Fantastic Flitcrofts.
With a script from Paddington 2 co-writer Simon Farnaby and Craig Roberts looking to make this as his third film as a director, Flitcrofts will find Rylance as Maurice Flitcroft, a dreamer and unrelenting optimist, who managed to gain entry to The British Open Golf Championship, qualifying in 1976 and subsequently shot the worst round in Open history, becoming a folk hero in the process. It's the same sort of none-more-British story of an outsider looking to make his mark that powered Eddie The Eagle. Farnaby adapted the story from The Phantom Of The Open, which he wrote with journalist Scott Murray.
"I am particularly thrilled to be offered a comedy," Rylance says. "I have had some of my best times in the theatre in comedies, Boeing Boeing, and Twelfth Night in the West End and on Broadway. This is the first comic film I have ever been offered. A comedy of character and situation which I love."
It's still early days for the film, which is being sold at the Cannes Virtual Market next week, so there's no indication yet when cameras might roll.