by FilmInk staff
Emmy Nominee and Critics Choice award winner Jonathan Bailey (Fellow Travellers, Wicked, Jurassic World: Rebirth) and Academy Award nominee and BAFTA winner Bill Nighy (Living, About Time), are set to star in Dominic Cooke’s (The Courier, On Chesil Beach) love story INSOMNIAC CITY, about writer and photographer Bill Hayes and celebrated neurologist Oliver Sacks.
Adapted from Hayes’s 2017 memoir, INSOMNIAC CITY follows Hayes as he arrives in New York City from San Francisco in the wake of a devastating loss. As he begins to rebuild his life, he falls unexpectedly in love with both the city and Oliver Sacks, whose writing and groundbreaking work in neurology made him one of the most distinctive voices in modern medicine.
Set against the restless, vibrant backdrop of New York City, INSOMNIAC CITY is an intimate and uplifting portrait of grief, hope, community and second chances, and of the remarkable possibility of finding love when it is least expected.
Bailey will play Hayes opposite Nighy as Sacks, bringing to the screen a relationship that transformed both men’s lives during Sacks’s final years. Described by The New York Times as the “poet laureate of contemporary medicine”, Sacks was celebrated for the humanity and curiosity he brought to his work. He was the author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat and Awakenings. Awakenings was adapted into the Academy Award-nominated film starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro.
Co-written and adapted for the big screen by Hayes and Cooke, INSOMNIAC CITY will be produced by Troy Lum (Lee, Dangerous Animals) and Andrew Mason (Lee, The Matrix) for their UK-Australian outfit Brouhaha Entertainment, Jonathan Bailey, Mike Goodridge (Ballad of a Small Player, Triangle of Sadness), and Gabrielle Tana (Elsinore, Philomena). Executive Producers are Will Clarke (Ali & Ava, Submarine), Andy Mason (No Way Up, Butcher’s Crossing) and Mike Runagall (Ali & Ava, Dating Amber) via Altitude.
Dominic Cooke says, “INSOMNIAC CITY is a rare story that feels both profoundly intimate and epic in scope. It is a story that celebrates second chances in life; a portrait of two people finding each other at an unexpected moment in their lives. It is also a love letter to New York City itself, a place of endless possibility, reinvention and connection. Bill Hayes’ memoir captures the fragile beauty of love in the face of mortality, and I am honoured to bring that story to the screen alongside our extraordinary actors, Jonathan Bailey, Bill Nighy and our producing team.”
Altitude is handling worldwide sales and will introduce the project to buyers at AFM.
Kismet will release the film locally in cinemas across Australia and New Zealand.
