On location in Atlas Studios Ouarzazate, Morocco (Photo: Tony Tilse, Facebook).
Jacqueline McKenzie and Daniel Lapaine are playing a quintessentially British aristocratic couple in Miss Fisher & the Crypt of Tears, the feature film spin-off of the ABC series and novels by Kerry Greenwood, which is now shooting in Morocco.
Lord and Lady Lofthouse are old friends of Essie Davis’ Miss Phryne Fisher, who rescues Shirin Abbas, a young Bedouin girl (Australian newcomer Izabella Yena) from prison in Jerusalem and then sets out to find priceless emeralds and to solve the suspicious disappearance of Shirin’s tribe.
Lapaine’s character Lord ‘Lofty’ Lofthouse is described as a man of easygoing charm, the product of generations of wealthy British aristocracy, who served as a high-ranking officer in the Palestinian and Sinai campaigns of World War One. His late parents knew Phyrne’s Aunt Prudence (Miriam Margolyes).
His devoted wife Lady Eleanor is attractive, elegant and civilised. Over the years she too formed a close friendship with Prudence.
Brit Rupert Penry-Jones is First Lieutenant Jonathon Lofthouse, who is more reserved than his older brother Lofty and carries a heavy guilt after serving in WW1. His life has been a house of cards built on a terrible secret since he returned from service in the Middle East.
Location scouting in Erfoud (Photo: Tony Tilse, Facebook).
Tony Tilse is directing the movie scripted by Deb Cox and produced by her Every Cloud Productions’ partner Fiona Eagger. Lucy Maclaren is co-producer. Nathan Page returns as Detective Inspector Jack Robinson with Margolyes as Aunt Prudence, Ashleigh Cummings as the loyal assistant and maid Dorothy ‘Dot’ Collins and Hugo Johnstone-Burt as her husband Constable Hugh Collins.
Roadshow will release in Australia and All3Media International is handling global sales.
Penry-Jones stars alongside Gemma Arterton and Elizabeth Debicki in Vita and Virginia, director Chanya Button’s feature film based on the true story of the love affair between English socialite and author Vita Sackville-West and literary icon Virginia Woolf.
Arterton is Sackville-West with Penry-Jones as her husband Sir Harold Nicholson, a British diplomat, author and politician, and Debicki as Woolf. Transmission Films will release the film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, next year.