I haven’t been sleeping well lately, so for me this is exciting news. Peter Morgan is working on a sequel to his Oscar winning, over-praised snoozefest The Queen.
You remember The Queen. It’s the movie you heard about last year, where Helen Mirren wastes a brilliant performance on a boring, Princess Diana death-humping script. Luckily for Mirren, critics and audiences rubbed themselves all over it anyway, the way the world always does when Diana’s name is mentioned in conjunction with anything.
Where The Queen languished over Queen Elizabeth’s reaction to the death of her adulterous ex-daughter in-law, Variety says the follow up will root around in the relationship between Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, and George Bush. The focus will be how Blair managed to handle the changeover in power from charming liberal ally Clinton to war-mongering, speech-mangling Bush.
The film stands at least a chance of being more interesting than The Queen, since it’s actually about something important. The way America’s relationship with Britain changed with the rise of Bush 2 is an important piece of history, as opposed to the death of Princess Diana which was mostly an excuse for overweight housewives to throw a hissy fit.
