Rhys Ifans has signed on to play British drug-smuggler and sometime spy Howard Marks in writer/director Bernard Rose’s adaptation of Marks’ best-selling 2002 autobiography Mr. Nice.
Marks was famed as Britain’s most wanted man during his drug-smuggling hey day, shipping tons of marijuana into the UK throughout the 70s and 80s. A graduate of Oxford and a one-time teacher, Marks travelled the globe for business and pleasure until he was eventually arrested by the DEA and spent the best part of seven years in a US penitentiary.
David Thewlis will play Irishman Jim McCann, a republican contact of Marks’ who fixed things for the smuggling operation at Shannon airport, and Chloe Sevigny will play Marks’ wife, Judy.
Ifans will appear next in The Informers and Richard Curtis’ latest The Boat That Rocked. This project seems tailor made for the Welshman (Marks is also Welsh) and we can’t wait to see what he does with the character, and how the film translates the excellent source material to the screen. Definitely one for your calendar, Mr. Nice will be released in late 2009.