Screen Talk: Brit TV classics to hit big screen

Hollywood never rests. Although the talk this month is all about the forthcoming Oscars, many are already looking ahead to the 2010 Academy Awards. And two heavyweight adaptations of hit UK television series are the films on everyone's lips.

First up is the Oscar-winning Brit director Kevin Macdonald's adaptation of the BBC thriller State of Play. The original, about a team of newspaper reporters investigating a political conspiracy, starred Bill Nighy, John Simm, Kelly Macdonald and a young James McAvoy. Universal and Working Title's new screen version, set to be released around the world in April, sees Russell Crowe, Jason Bateman, Robin Wright Penn, Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams take centre stage.

Also in the works is another revamp of a cult BBC television thriller, this time set in and around the nuclear industry in the 1980s, Edge of Darkness. Run by the Oscar-winning Brit producer Graham King, GK Films' update is directed by Martin Campbell and stars Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone and newcomer Bojana Novakovic, a Serbian-born Australian actress.

The aim is for them to replicate the critical and commercial success of Steven Soderbergh's 2000 film Traffic, based on a Channel 4 mini-series about drug-running. Soderbergh's movie scooped four Oscars and smuggled more than $120m out of cinemas worldwide.

Big-screen versions of TV shows have always proved a rich seam to mine. Starsky & Hutch, starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, grossed $170m around the world in 2005; Michael Mann's Miami Vice, starring Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, took $164m in 2006; and even Bewitched in 2005, based on the 1960s US TV show, twitched its nose to more than $130m from the global box office – despite a Razzie nomination for worst screen couple.

Another iconic British TV show set to get the big-screen treatment is The Sweeney. The UK company DNA Films is working on a version, with Ray Winstone signed to star in the role John Thaw made famous, and Michael Fassbender rumoured to take the Dennis Waterman part. Fassbender was catapulted into the spotlight last year for playing IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen's award-winning Hunger. Directing the men in the Cuban heels and flares will be roustabout Brit director Nick Love.

To strike or not to strike?

The season of goodwill is unlikely to last for the movie industry – especially front-of-camera talent – if Hollywood actors vote to strike later this month. The powder-and-paint brigade are being balloted on whether or not to down tools as early as the end of January over new contracts with producers.

In such harsh economic times, the film industry can ill afford to be brought to a halt right now. Like every company in the world, Hollywood studios are slashing costs and plan to put far fewer films into production in 2009. This is bad news for the hundreds of thousands of people employed by the US film industry in LA and around the world, and few, including many of the actors, have the appetite for a strike this year.

A strike involving the A-list – think Will Smith, Christian Bale, Tom Cruise, Ben Stiller, Brad Pitt, Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Angelina Jolie – would provoke a furious rejigging of schedules as films are scrambled into production before industrial action.

But industry gossips point out that many of the top names also have their own production companies. Smith is probably the only actor who still commands $20m a film, rising to $25m with his producer demands.

So the smart money is on a speedy resolution before the Oscars roll round in February.

Stuart Kemp is the UK bureau chief of 'The Hollywood Reporter'