HIDDEN, a four-part series, will see him teaming up with another well-loved TV detective, actor David Suchet - best known for more than 20 years as Poirot. It will be made by Origin Pictures, the indie behind the soon-to-launch BBC drama The Crimson Petal and the White.

Glenister plays Harry Venn, a solicitor who takes on a case which leads him to get drawn into the investigation of his brother’s death 20 years earlier.

Suchet will play barrister Sir Nigel Fountain.

The series has been written by Ronan Bennett, who was behind the drama The Hamburg Cell, and who also worked with veteran screenwriter Walter Bernstein. Niall MacCormick (The Long Walk to Finchley, Wallander, Albatross) will direct.

Glenister said: “I am looking forward to shooting Hidden, which I feel is a bold, innovative, complex piece of drama from the pen of Ronan Bennett.”

Executive producer of the series David Thompson said: “As soon as we started discussing this idea with Ronan and Walter, the first actor who sprang to mind was Phil Glenister. The role is tailor-made for him.

“Ronan and Walter have given us an electric and highly provocative drama which is very much of the moment.”

The series - which also stars In Bruges actress Thekla Reuten as lawyer Gina Hawkes - begins filming in Belfast shortly.

Glenister won a huge following army of fans for his role as DCI Hunt, during two series of Life on Mars and two series of Ashes To Ashes.

This is his first new role for the BBC since the programme ended in 2010, although he appeared in Sky1’s Mad Dogs earlier this year.

UK producers Origin Pictures and Film4 are co-producing features to be written by Jane Goldman (X-Men: First Class, Kick-Ass) and playwright Polly Stenham.

Anubis, a short story by Paul Murray, whose novel Skippy Dies was nominated for The Man Booker Prize in 2010, is a futuristic, space-set relationship comedy in which two travellers are distracted from their mission by beautiful women. The feature will see a directorial debut for Yann Demange, whose TV work includes Dead Set, Criminal Justice and the upcoming Top Boy.

Origin Pictures head of development Ed Rubin told Screen: “This is genuinely distinctive and appealing territory, with the feel of something like Sideways in space. We responded to the material instantly and we’re thrilled to be working with talent such as Jane and Yann.”

Origin is also developing a feature adaptation of playwright Polly Stenham’s Tusk Tusk, which the acclaimed young writer is adapting for the screen after its successful run at the Royal Court Theatre in March 2009. Tusk Tusk charts the interaction between three children left to fend for themselves in a London flat after their mother goes AWOL. A director is yet to be attached.

Origin chief executive DavidThompson said of the project: “Polly is one of the most startling and talented new voices in British writing and we are very excited to be working on this fantastic project with her and Film4.”

Film4’s recent credits include Submarine and The Eagle, while The Iron Lady and Shame are currently in production.

Origin is currently developing Michael Thomas’s adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn, which Justin Chadwick is attached to direct, and William Boyd’s adaptation of his novel Ordinary Thunderstorms with BBC Films. Thriller The Awakening is in post production, while Chadwick’s The First Grader is released in the UK this spring by Soda Pictures.

Directed by Justin Chadwick from a script by Ann Peacock, the pic is based on the true story of an 84-year-old Kenyan man's battle to get an education. "First Grader," which garnered favorable critical response at the Telluride and Toronto fests, stars Oliver Musila Litondo and Naomie Harris.

"When I saw 'The First Grader,' I knew immediately that National Geographic should acquire it. It's not only about historic political events, but it tells the personal story with great warmth and humor," National Geographic Entertainment prexy Daniel Battsek said.

Battsek has made a handful of strategic festival buys since arriving at National Geographic from Miramax, including docu "Restrepo" and Mt. Everest adventure "The Wildest Dream," as well as the upcoming "Desert Flower," "Flying Monsters 3D" and "Blue Man Group: Mind Blast."

Origin Pictures' Thompson called National Geographic a perfect fit for the film.

Distant Horizon's Singh repped domestic rights to "First Grader" (Distant Horizon co-financed the pic). Goldcrest Intl.'s Penny Wolf is handling international sales.

Read more at variety.com

The First Grader premiered to packed audiences at Telluride and Toronto Film Festival this month. It received rave reviews and came runner up for the audience prize at Toronto - out of 300 films.

Variety concluded that “judging by its enthusiastic, wet-eyed reception at the Telluride Film Festival, pic should have no trouble filling seats in specialty release” and The Hollywood Reporter singled Justin out for striking the “perfect balance between humor and tragic gravity, and the result is that an unknown story seems certain to stir the hearts of audiences worldwide.” Off the back of the screening, the LA Times ran a piece on Naomie describing her as “poised for stardom” after “audiences responded with tears, standing ovations and buzz that Harris could be an awards contender”.

The film is having its UK Premiere as a Microsoft Gala Screening as part of the London Film Festival on October 26th. For more information and tickets please go to www.bfi.org

The film's website

Hollywood Reporter review

Variety

Synopsis: Supernatural thriller set in post-World War I England in 1921, which follows a skeptical woman, Florence, (played by Rebecca Hall) who is invited by the headmaster of a countryside boarding school (Dominic West) to investigate rumours of an apparent haunting, only to have a chilling encounter which defies her rational beliefs.

The Awakening is David Thompson’s second film (following Justin Chadwick’s First Grader, which is world premiering in Toronto), since setting up his UK independent production company Origin Pictures in 2008.

Thompson, first came across Stephen Volk’s script whilst he was still working as head of films at the BBC, where he financed projects including The Duchess, Fish Tank and Bright Star. “It went through various manifestations, but only now did it seem like the right time to make it, when Canal Plus and Studio Canal and Optimum got behind it,” says Thompson, who admits that the horror genre is a departure for him.

“I thought it was a really exciting and unusual project, because I’ve done a great variety of films, but never one with this sort of tone. I’ve always wanted to do something scary, but not gratuitous. Something with intelligence about it. And that’s the script we’ve got, a really powerful drama and a story of great emotion, with a lot of scares” says Thompson.
Thompson enlisted first time feature director Nick Murphy who had impressed him with his UK TV dramas Occupation and Primeval.
“I wanted to find someone who had an original and fresh voice and was really hungry for it. Nick responded to the material immediately, and he came in and worked on a draft from the original script. He’s really brought his own take to it,” says Thompson.

Murphy says he was keen to steer away from the classic horror, instead choosing to focus on the story’s psychological elements. “It is set in 1921 when so many people had died in the war. All of the characters in the film have people missing next to them, and so I’m trying, as gently as I can, to keep the sense of empty benches, chairs, missing paintings and marks they left, so you get the sense of absence, ” says Murphy, who admits that he drew some inspiration from Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Orphange.
“You see a lot of films in Britain and come away thinking, that was fine, but it didn’t surprise me. The important thing with this is, I want people to reach the lobby and say, good god, that wasn’t what I expected,” he adds.
Julia Stannard, who is producing the film alongside Thompson and whose previous credits include The History Boys and Boogie Woogie, says that one of the challenges has been getting the period details and the locations right. “Working on a period piece is hard as far as the budget is concerned, because everything has to be spot on. Nick had a very clear vision and from our point of view it’s about supporting that vision.”
In the end four different locations were used for the school – the exterior at Lime Park in Cheshire, (including the infamous lake where Colin Firth/Mr Darcy emerged from in the BBC TV adaptation of Pride And Prejudice), whilst the interiors were split between three locations in Scotland – Gosford (just outside Edinburgh), Mandiston and Marchmond, in the borders area. The film also shot for four days in London, including a scene in Regent’s Park, where Screen visited the set.
Thompson says that Murphy’s lack of feature directing experience has never worried him. “I spent a lot of time working with first time directors, while I was at the BBC and a lot of the great British directors we have had have come out of television, from Stephen Frears, onwards and backwards.”
The film stars Rebecca Hall, who, says Murphy, was always his first choice for the lead. “I didn’t have a picture of her next to my monitor, that would have been a bit freaky. But yes, you need a voice to write to and it happened to be hers.”
Thompson says that in today’s tough market, having a strong cast was key to getting the film made. “I was involved in An Education at the BBC, and the alarming thing is that one of the financiers said to me, if that film had been made now, they couldn’t have done it with Carey Mulligan, it would have had to be a known star. What a shame. I hope desperately that the financiers will still give us the opportunity to grow new stars as well.”
He admits that getting Dominic West, who shot to international fame in HBO’s The Wire, to sign up to the project was “a coup”. “It’s hard to find actors who will attract money like that, and Dominic has a real following everywhere.” And the cast was one of the things that attracted Studio Canal to the project, along with, says its international sales director Harold Valnier, “a super talented director at the service of a terrifyingly good script. We believe it will scare audiences around the world in a very unique, chilling and entertaining way.”
And how is Thompson adjusting to life as an independent producer? “I worked bloody hard at the BBC but I have to say I’m working harder than ever as an independent producer. But I haven’t lost my appetite. Every day you go on set and something happens which triggers an excitement in you. It’s challenging and obsessive, but I wouldn’t want to do anything else.”

Next up: Thompson is producing a feature version of William Boyd’s novel Ordinary Thunderstorms, and a project being written by Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton, who wrote the BBC series Outnumbered. On the television side, he is producing a four part serial for BBC 2, Crimson Petal And The White, based on the novel by Michel Faber with Marc Munden directing and Romola Garai and Gillian Anderson starring.

The taut and compelling mystery serial revolves around Harry Venn, a small-time solicitor who is forced to delve back into his murky past when a mysterious lawyer, Gina Hawkes, turns up asking Harry to find a missing alibi witness for her client. He takes on the job but is unwittingly drawn into investigating the supposed death of his brother Mark, and soon finds himself caught up in a bigger and more complex conspiracy. The thriller blurs the line between the political and the personal to keep audiences guessing at every turn.

It will shoot early 2011.

Adapted by acclaimed playwright and screenwriter Lucinda Coxon and directed by award winning Marc Munden (The Devil's Whore, The Mark Of Cain), this intimate psychological thriller lifts the lid on the darker side of Victorian London revealing a world seething with vitality, sexuality, ambition and emotion.

This provocative and riveting tale tells the story of Sugar (Romola Garai), an alluring, well read young prostitute who yearns for a better life away from the brothel she is attached to, run by the contemptible Mrs Castaway (Gillian Anderson).

Highly sought after and sexually adept, Sugar finds her only comfort in the secret novel she is writing in which a murderous prostitute takes revenge on her clients. However, things change for her when she meets wealthy businessman William Rackham (Chris O’Dowd).

Sugar is a thrilling antidote to William’s life, saddled with a pious brother, Henry Rackham (Mark Gatiss) and fragile wife Agnes Rackham (Amanda Hale.) Agnes regularly endures visits from the invasive physician Doctor Curlew (Richard E Grant) leaving her unable to perform her wifely duties.

William ensconces Sugar as his mistress and she soon grows accustomed to her new life. Yet unbeknownst to William, Sugar begins to hatch a plan which sets a series of events in motion that will change their lives forever…

The drama shoots August to October 2010