It has been announced that Micheal Ward—star of the most recent series of Top Boy and Steve McQueen’s Small Axe: Lovers Rock—has been cast in Sam Mendes’ upcoming film, Empire Of Light.
The film, which is being released by Searchlight Pictures, will star The Crown’s Olivia Colman and has been slated for release in Autumn 2022. Ward is said to have been cast as the male lead in the film, which is reportedly a love story set in an old cinema in the South Coast of England in the 1980s.
Mendes, who penned the screenplay for Empire Of Light, will produce the film with Pipa Harris via Neal Street productions and it will mark the first time that he’s been credited on a script by himself. Mendes will also be working with Roger Deakins, a cinematographer he worked with previously for his movie, 1917.
