The movie adaptation of the sell-out play, ‘One Night in Istanbul’, has been filming in Tuebrook, Liverpool as it makes the leap to the big screen.
The story centres around the historic Liverpool v AC Milan Champions League final at the Istanbul Ataturk Stadium.
However, rather than concentrating on the football and Liverpool’s epic comeback win, the film is based around the exploits of four supporters and their attempts to watch the match.
The original play was written by Nicky Allt, who formerlyy studied Creative Script Writing at Liverpool John Moores University.
He had huge success with his play “Brick Up the Mersey Tunnels’ at the Royal Court Theatre, which over 160,000 people came to see. ‘One Night in Istanbul’ was his next production and it became was the fastest selling play at the Empire Theatre.
He has now taken the leap to adapting his script into a film, after a two-and-a-half-year struggle to get funding.
It will star well-known actors such as Paul Barber, who played Denzel in ‘Only Fools and Horses’, Samantha Womack, most commonly known as Ronnie Mitchell from ‘Eastenders’, and Steven Waddington, from ‘The Last of the Mohicans’.
Speaking exclusively to JMU Journalism, Mr Allt said: “After raising some money from local businesses, I went to London to raise the rest. It’s been hard work, what with investors pulling out and other struggles. There were times I thought we’d never get there. My family have suffered, I’ve spoken about nothing else for the past few years.”
However, he persevered, and finally raised the funds to start filming.
The majority of filming took place in Istanbul, with the main character enduring goat fights, Turkish baths, prison and torture just to see the Liverpool match.
He said: “We’ve just been in Istanbul for five weeks filming. We had the same production company as films like ‘Skyfall’ and ‘Taken 2’, so we were lucky to be able to use the same filming locations as they did. It feels like we’ve made a £10 million film on a budget of £1 million.”
Allt was extremely positive about the film’s prospects, adding: “I feel like we’ve made a brilliant movie, I’ve got a good feeling about it.”
The film is due to be released into cinemas in April 2013.