Acclaimed film director Jim Sheridan wants Oscar winner Gary Oldman to star as Dr Jim Swire in his TV drama about the Lockerbie bombing.
The award-winning Irish film-maker is planning a television series about the 1988 terrorist attack and the grieving father’s pursuit of the truth about who was responsible.
Sheridan said he was not convinced that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was guilty of the attack and backed the legal appeal against his conviction.
Oldman, who won an Oscar for best actor this month for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, is top of Sheridan’s list of actors to play Swire, whose daughter Flora, 23, was killed in the bombing.
Sheridan is best known for his film In the Name Of The Father, about the Guildford Four’s fight against their wrongful conviction. (...)
Sheridan has been working on a film about Lockerbie for years but now believes it should be a TV series made by a channel such as Netflix, HBO or Amazon. He said: “I gave the script to a few well-known actors and they came and said it should be a TV series.
“They said I was trying to cram too much into two hours.”
Asked who he wanted to play Swire, he said: “There are a lot of great actors in England and Ireland, like Gary Oldman, who just won the Oscar. Liam Neeson is a great actor, Daniel Day-Lewis is a great actor. I like Ralph Fiennes as an actor as well. It needs an actor of that calibre.” (...)
Sheridan hopes to begin filming the series this year.
He said: “I think it could be started by the 30th anniversary. We’ve had a lot of interest in the story and we’ve had a lot of actors respond to it as well.” (...)
Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence agent, was the only person convicted of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103.
He was convicted in 2001 but released from Greenock prison by the Scottish Government eight years later after being diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer.
Megrahi died protesting his innocence and an appeal against his conviction was lodged last year.
Swire has led the campaign to clear his name.
Sheridan said: “The story of Jim Swire and Megrahi is an extraordinary one – Jim going to the guy he thought murdered his daughter, accepting he didn’t do it, helping him and then realising as a doctor that he wasn’t well.”
Asked what he admired most about Swire, Sheridan said: “His Christianity really is the main thing. He hasn’t become broken as a person or bitter. He has maintained a humanistic outlook where so many other people would become embittered.”
Swire believes Megrahi was innocent and that Iran bombed the jet as revenge for the shooting down of an Iranair flight by a US missile five months earlier. (...)
Sheridan said: “Lockerbie seems to me to be such an extraordinary story. But I don’t know if the truth will ever come out. I’m not sure it will happen in Jim’s lifetime.”
Megrahi was convicted of planting the Pan Am Flight 103 bomb in luggage at Malta airport.
The suitcase was supposedly transported to Frankfurt and then London before being put on the New York-bound Boeing 747, which blew up over Lockerbie half an hour into its flight.
But Swire believes the explosives were loaded on at Heathrow.
And Sheridan said: “Why would any person put a bomb on a plane that has to be taken off, put on another plane, and then taken off and put on a third plane, and then blows up half an hour into the flight?
“To get all that right, you would have to be both a genius and an idiot to set the bomb’s timer 30 minutes into the flight. It just doesn’t make any sense. I think it is much more likely that the bomb originated on the plane.”
Over the past 30 years, there have been claims that the FBI fabricated evidence to blame Libya for the Lockerbie bombing.
Sheridan said: “Can you imagine a situation where a plane carrying a lot of English passengers crashed in upstate New York and the English police came over and cordoned off the area and owned the investigation? So how did Scotland let it happen?”
Megrahi died protesting his innocence and an appeal against his conviction has been made by his widow Aisha and son Ali.
Sheridan said: “I think there should be a new investigation. When you look at the evidence, the conviction makes no sense. However, I know American families still believe Megrahi did it, and Libya accepted accountability by paying out.”
Asked if he supported the appeal against Megrahi’s conviction,he said: “One hundred per cent.”
I do hope he will include in the series all the related parties who had an "Interest"in making sure that plane never reached its destination. He has made some very good points already and we do need a proper public inquiry. As anyone with half a brain can see Megrahi was framed. Who wanted that verdict and why?
ReplyDeleteThis is of course fantastic news.
ReplyDeleteLong ago I saw snippets of
"In the Name Of The Father"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Name_of_the_Father_(film)
on YouTube, and they left an impression I can still recall.
As can be seen from the Wikipedia-article it is a very respected piece of work.
Please, Mr. Sheridan, may you and e.g. Moraq Keer find time to meet along the way.
If grave mistakes must appear in the work - don't let it be adequately explained by 'sloppyness'.
Scriptwriters and instructors will naturally always have other agendas than to bring the truth, the whole, and nothing but. Artistic freedom is here to stay.
But why do we at times see complete misunderstandings, which seem to appear for no good reason at all, other than that nobody with knowledge has ever reviewed the script? If the truth ever mattered at all.
Does it drag down the work and those who made it?
Of course it does.
Insrtructors depicting historical events will leave people with some impression of what the the truth was.
Here is an infamous example, and shame on Norman Jewison. The best thing that can be said is, that the Lafayette murders were not used as an excuse to suppress, rob and destroy a nation, like the PANAM 103 murders were.
"Hurricane" reviews
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/apr/24/the-hurricane-rubin-carter-denzel-washington
http://graphicwitness.com/carter/moviepoints.html
It's true, I do feel sad when people with the wherewithall to make a public impact in this area don't seem to have reviewed all the available facts. I've spoken to a number of such people (not to Mr Sheridan though) and often they're more interested in what will make a punchy drama than in actually putting across known fact.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is odd.
And Sheridan said: “Why would any person put a bomb on a plane that has to be taken off, put on another plane, and then taken off and put on a third plane, and then blows up half an hour into the flight?
“To get all that right, you would have to be both a genius and an idiot to set the bomb’s timer 30 minutes into the flight. It just doesn’t make any sense. I think it is much more likely that the bomb originated on the plane.”
We don't need to speculate about any of that. The evidence is entirely clear. The bomb suitcase was placed directly into the PA103 baggage container at Heathrow. We know it wasn't put on one plane and transferred to another and so on. So why even make an argument from improbability at this stage? Why not base your position on the actual evidence?
Also, what does "I think it is much more likely that the bomb originated on the plane," even mean? I don't know what he's trying to say here. It didn't spontaneously generate on the plane, that's for sure. But again, "likely" isn't the point. It's known how it happened. The authorities don't accept the evidence of course, but a production like this one could help demonstrate what actually happened. What a pity if instead of doing that it turns into a vehicle for someone's speculative fantasies about what "might" have happened.