The King’s Speech: A film fit for a King

An Australian therapist that broke all royal protocols to help the King overcome a psychological speech impediment. Sounds like the perfect story for an official co-production, so why isn’t The King’s Speech one? Miguel Gonzalez reports.

Official co-productions are a way for producers to find international partners and access their resources, talent and audiences; they are a strategic priority for Australia’s creatives and screen authorities. They can’t be forced creatively, but if there was ever a story that seemed to be destined to be a co-production, that was The King’s Speech. Directed by Tom Hooper and co-produced by See-Saw Films and Bedlam Productions, The King’s Speech is based on the story of Prince Albert, whose stammering was the cause of constant public humiliation. No specialist had been able to help him, but the soon-to-be-King finally found his voice – the one that would eventually unify the nation during the war – with the help of an unorthodox Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue.
“It’s a culture clash film in many ways, and it’s this difference that helps the King; it would have been absolutely inappropriate for a lower class Englishman to talk to the King the way that Lionel talks to him. The Australianness of the character is key to the story,” explained producer Emile Sherman.
Geoffrey Rush was attached early on to play Logue, and fellow Australian Guy Pearce plays Edward VII. They are joined by Colin Firth as King George VI and Helena Bonham Carter as Elizabeth, the Queen consort. Hooper himself is half Australian. All the elements seemed to be in place for an official co-production, so why didn’t it become one?

NOT ENOUGH VALUE
The King’s Speech was a passion project for writer David Seidler, for whom the King’s real life struggle was an inspiration to overcome his own stammer. In the 70s Seidler even contacted the Queen Mother to seek her permission to tell her late husband’s story; the official response was “Please, not in my lifetime”. He revisited the concept in 2005 and turned it into a play, and London-based theatre company Wild Thyme was set to produce it. But Wild Thyme’s Joan Lane saw its film potential and took it to Bedlam Productions.
In 2008, Bedlam’s Gareth Unwin was trying to adapt it into a film, but according to Sherman, Unwin felt that he needed to team up with an experienced production company. The fact that the story had a strong Australian element gave him the idea that an Australian company would be the right partner, so he contacted Sherman and his UK-based partner Iain Canning, who had just set up See-Saw Films.
“It felt like a perfect project,” recalled Sherman. “We could develop it and work out the best way to structure it, whether as a co-production or as a UK-based project.”
Together, Bedlam and See-Saw started developing the drafts with Seidler and Hooper. Sherman was spending his days and nights on calls with the US and the UK, and he eventually had to relocate to London, to finalise the finance and further refine the script, which reached a point where it was good enough to be sent out to select financiers. The response was overwhelming: “Even though the project was not ready, we were bombarded with interest from financiers all around the world. People could see the potential of the story,” said Sherman.
There were a number of different finance structures for the U$12m project, but in the end, the film was made as a UK production – with money from the defunct UK Film Council, Prescience Film Finance UK’s Momentum Pictures, and American distributor The Weinstein Co.

“I did discuss it with Screen Australia, but when the UK Film Council came in and we crunched the numbers, it seemed like we weren’t gaining that much from structuring it as an official co-production. There was the [Producer Offset] rebate, but at the same time, there were additional costs of moving part of the shoot to Australia.