Hi there, it’s been a while! Of course, with everything that is happening, there isn’t much to update….but we have some news on Gemma’s new movie Summerland. Brand new production stills, posters and behind the scenes have been added to the gallery and the trailer for the movie can be watched below! Too bad there wont’ be a promotional tour for this movie….but at least you can enjoy the new additions!

THE GUARDIAN – More than 50 of the biggest acting names in the UK, including Gemma Arterton, James Norton, and Lennie James, have signed up to appear in a series of digital plays written in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Unprecedented: Theatre from a State of Isolation will feature more than 10 new plays, which will be rehearsed and filmed using digital conferencing technology and come from playwrights, including James Graham and April De Angelis.

The series of plays is curated by Headlong, Century Films and BBC Arts, and “explores our rapidly evolving world”, while responding to “how our understanding and experiences of modern Britain are evolving during the crisis”.

Other names working on the project include the Mighty Boosh actor Julian Barratt, Rory Kinnear, Meera Syal and Alison Steadman. The plays will be broadcast by the BBC as part of its Culture in Quarantine initiative and will be available to stream from May.

Headlong’s artistic director, Jeremy Herrin, said: “I’m finding that making these shows is a way of processing all the contradictions of this alarming historical moment. At a time when we are all feeling isolated, creating a community around this project feels like a soulful thing to do. We can actually be supportive of our family of freelance artists and create decent work whilst doing so. Personally, I’m finding it a great distraction at a time when the iniquities in our society are being shockingly exposed.”

A statement said that the Unprecedented series will “ask how we got here and what the enduring legacy of this historic episode might be”. The new works will aim to “give an immediate insight into this extraordinary communal experience”.

In a blogpost about its Culture in Quarantine series, BBC Arts director Jonty Claypole said it would be a “virtual festival of the arts” rooted in the experience of isolation. “All this will be done hand-in-hand with the wider arts and cultural sector through coverage and collaboration,” he said.

The BBC announced a number of other theatre productions as part of Culture in Quarantine, including streams of Mike Bartlett’s play Albion, which has had two runs at the Almeida, Emma Rice’s Wise Children and half a dozen Royal Shakespeare Company productions.

Other online initiatives triggered by the Covid-19 outbreak include the National Theatre’s decision to stream some of its most popular plays for free during the lockdown. The National Theatre at Home programme started with One Man, Two Guvnors, starring James Corden, which was watched in more than 200,000 households when it went out on the evening of 2 April.

Other productions to be streamed by the NT include Bryony Lavery’s adaptation of Treasure Island, which is available until Thursday, and the 2017 Twelfth Night, with Tamsin Greig as Malvolia. More titles are to be announced.

DEADLINE – Alessandro Nivola and Gemma Arterton head a killer cast for a three-part adaptation of the 1939 classic Rumer Godden literary novel Black Narcissus, a tale of sexual repression and forbidden love. BAFTA-winning writer Amanda Coe (The Trial of Christine Keeler, Apple Tree Yard) wrote the three hourlong episodes and renowned DP Charlotte Bruus Christensen makes her directing debut.

BBC One is producing with DNA TV and FX Productions. The exec producers are Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich and Coe for DNA TV and FX Productions and Lucy Richer for the BBC. Filming starts in October in Jomsom, Nepal and Pinewood Studios, UK.

Black Narcissus was previously adapted for screen in 1947 by Powell and Pressburger and subsequently won two Oscars for Cinematography (Jack Cardiff) and Art Direction (Alfred Junge).

Arterton (The King’s Man, The Escape) plays Sister Clodagh, the leader of the nuns of St Faiths, who travel to Nepal to set up a branch of their order in the remote palace of Mopu. In the unfettered sensuality of the so-called House of Women, Sister Clodagh finds herself increasingly attracted to a handsome and damaged land agent, Mr Dean (Nivola). He is a dissolute English colonial and First World War veteran whose combative relationship with the head sister of the order awakens hidden longings in both. But as the repressed memories of Clodagh’s past become entangled with the tragic history of Princess Srimati, history seems doomed to repeat itself. Are there really ghosts here in the Himalayas, or are the nuns just succumbing to long-repressed primal desires? And which of them is prepared to die – or kill – for love?

Said Coe: “I’m thrilled to be adapting Black Narcissus for BBC One. It’s a truly extraordinary love story, as well as a brilliantly unsettling piece of 20th century gothic about the power of a place to get under your skin and the dangers of refusing to learn from history.”

Nivola takes on the project after filming the lead role of Dickie Moltisanti in The Sopranos prequel film The Many Saints of Newark for New Line and Warner Bros, which Sopranos creator David Chase co-wrote and produced. Aisling Franciosi (The Nightingale, I Know This Much Is True) plays Sister Ruth, Diana Rigg (Game of Thrones, Victoria) plays Mother Dorothea, Jim Broadbent (The Iron Lady) plays Father Roberts, Gina McKee (Catherine the Great, Bodyguard) plays Sister Adela, Rosie Cavaliero (Prey, Unforgotten) plays Sister Briony, Patsy Ferran (Tom and Jerry, Jamestown) plays Sister Blanche, Karen Bryson (MotherFatherSon, Safe) plays Sister Philippa, and Dipika Kunwar makes her TV debut as Kanchi. (source)

The site has been updated with some news on Vita & Virginia! Finally we have a trailer for the movie and also a promotional poster which has been added to the gallery, together with some new production stills.

The trailer sadly doesn’t featured a release date yet but let’s hope it’ll be soon.

Enjoy!

Yesterday (March 21) Gemma attended the Vita & Virginia premiere during the opening night of the BFI Flare Festival. The movie will be released in the UK later in the summer (July).

Several photos from the event have now been added to the gallery, be sure to check them out and enjoy!

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY – Director Matthew Vaughn’s third Kingsman movie is firming up a Kick-Ass cast.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson (re-teaming with Vaughn after Kick-Ass 2) and Gemma Arterton (The Escape, Netflix’s Watership Down) have joined the cast of Kingsman: The Great Game, EW has learned.

Vaughn, returning to write and direct, always intended the Kingsman films to be a trilogy. He previously spoke about potential plans for a more traditional sequel to Kingsman: The Golden Circle for “the conclusion of the Harry Hart-Eggsy relationship.” However, The Great Game is not that.

The subtitle is one Vaughn mentioned during past interviews in reference to a prequel that would follow the organization of Kingsman agents in the ’90s. Taron Egerton, the star of the past two Kingsman movies as Eggsy, will sit this one out as The Great Game will be the origin of the Kingsman story.

Taylor-Johnson and Arterton join the previously cast Charles Dance (HBO’s Game of Thrones), Daniel Bruhl (TNT’s The Alienist), Harris Dickinson (FX’s Trust), and Ralph Fiennes (Holmes & Watson).

Kingsman: The Secret Service introduced Eggsy as a London rabble-rouser recruited to try out for the Kingsman spy agency under the tutelage of Colin Firth’s Agent Harry Hart. The sequel, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, took the agents to meet the organization’s American brethren, The Statesman, to take down drug kingpin Poppy (Julianne Moore).

The Great Game is currently scheduled for release on Nov. 8. (source)

Back on Saturday, November 24 – Gemma attended the photocall for Watership Down, the animated television miniseries where she voice the rabbit Clover.

The event has been held at the BFI Southbank and several photos from it have now been added to the gallery! Be sure to check them out and enjoy :)