...the source for all things Cillian Murphy

Latest Work

Current Projects

Watching the Detectives

Going Straight to DVD

Shot in the wider New York metropolitan area in the summer of 2006, Watching the Detectives is a low budget romantic comedy written and directed by Broken Lizard comedy troupe member Paul Soter. Cillian plays Neil, a video store owner and film noir buff challenged by meeting real-life femme fatale Lucy Liu.

Detectives premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on 1 May 2007 in New York City. It failed to find a distributor, but Peace Arch, its production company, decided to self-distribute, and the flick was supposed to go into limited release in the U.S. on Valentine's Day 2008. That seemed very likely after the trailer came out online in January and excerpts began to appear on YouTube. But the film ended up going straight to DVD: it will be out in North America on 12 August 2008, and it is already out in Poland. But the DVD is available now for early renting in the U.S., exclusively at Blockbuster.

See the Watching the Detectives page in the Body of Work section.

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The Edge of Love

Coming in June/Coming this Autumn

Cillian plays the jealous husband of Keira Knightley in John Maybury's The Edge of Love (previously called The Best Time of Our Lives), a film about two women loved by poet Dylan Thomas. Welsh actor Matthew Rhys (Brothers and Sisters) stars as the womanizing Thomas, with Sienna Miller as Thomas' freespirited wife Caitlin MacNamara, Knightley as Thomas' teen sweetheart Vera Phillips, and Cillian as her husband William Killick. Screenwriter Sharman Macdonald (Knightley's mother) imagines the intimate details behind the real life events that culminated in Captain Killick shooting up the Thomases' New Quay, Wales home in 1945.

Shot in Wales and London, The Edge of Love will come out 20 June in London and Dublin, with a wider U.K./Ireland release on 27 June. Definite release dates for most other regions are still unknown, but promotional scenes from the film have been posted on YouTube.

See The Edge of Love page in the Body of Work section.

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The Dark Knight

Coming Soon

Batman Begins' Dr. Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow is one of Cillian's most famous roles, and when the Scarecrow crazily rode his steed into the mists of the Gotham Narrows, the door was left open for the character to reappear in Christopher Nolan's planned Batman sequels. When the first sequel, The Dark Knight, went into production in early 2007, Cillian wasn't on the official bill, but rumours of him reprising Crane repeatedly popped up. While Cillian had never confirmed whether he'd appear in The Dark Knight; he told MTV on 9 May that he "can't count on that at the moment," a comment which seems conveniently vague in retrospect. Because in June 2007, reports began to surface that he was on set as crafty members of the The Superhero Hype! Boards began posting photos and eyewitness accounts that Cillian was shooting a The Dark Knight scene in a Chicago parking garage. The next day, it was reported that Cillian was spotted visiting Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, confirming that the London resident was in the Windy City.

Still, the filmmakers and the studio kept tight-lipped—until 7 December, when the Los Angeles Times reported that a sneak peak at the first six minutes of the film revealed that Cillian was listed as a cast member. Director Nolan wouldn't give details, but confirmed it: "He is in the film briefly, yes, but I don't want to give away all of our surprises."

The Dark Knight comes out in July 2008.

See the Batman fans unmask the Scarecrow gallery in the Cillian Encounters area of our Fandom section.

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Waveriders

Coming Soon

This Irish surfing documentary—yes, that's right, Irish surfing—boasts Cillian as its narrator and U2 on its soundtrack. Joel Conroy's film uncovers the surprising connection between Irish surfing and the sport's homeland, Hawaii. Turns out that an Irishman named George Freeth reintroduced surfing to Hawaii at the turn of the 20th century, after European missionaries had crushed the pastime, and then Freeth went on to bring surfing to California, where he became the world's first lifeguard.

Waveriders made its world premiere at the Dublin International Film Festival on 22 February 2008, where it won the audience award, besting There Will Be Blood and In Bruges. It will play other festivals soon and is expected to be more widely released later this year.

See the Waveriders page in the Body of Work section.

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Hippie Hippie Shake

In Post-production

Looks like Cillian's career is taking a decidedly sexy turn: he plays Australian writer/futurist Richard Neville, the editor of the 1960s radical satirical underground magazine Oz and the focus of the longest obscenity trial at that time in British history. Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) adapted Neville's memoir, Hippie Hippie Shake: The Dreams, the Trips, the Trials, the Love-ins, the Screw Ups: The Sixties, which The Daily Telegraph describes as the tale of Neville's "bed-hopping, drug-fuelled antics."

Sienna Miller plays Louise Ferrier, party girl and girlfriend of the editor, Emma Booth plays feminist writer Germaine Greer, and Max Minghella and Nina Liu also star in this slice of psychedelic, swinging '60s London. Beeban Kidron (Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason) is directing, and Universal Pictures will distribute the Working Title Films production in 2009.

See the Hippie Hippie Shake On Location gallery in the Stage and Screen section of our Gallery.

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Peacock

In Post-production

Here's a real actor's challenge: Cillian will play John Skillpa, a shy bank teller with a split personality who must convince the mid-60s small town of Peacock, Nebraska that he's his own wife, Emma, after his alter ego is discovered when a train derails in his backyard. Peacock is described by Variety as a psychological thriller that will co-star Juno's Ellen Page as Maggie, "a struggling young mother who holds the key to his past and sparks a battle between the personalities." The two stars both say they were blown away by the script by first-time director Michael Lander and newcomer Ryan Roy. Cillian said, "(The script) offers an incredible challenge to an actor—one I couldn't turn down."

The cast is rounding out very promisingly: Susan Sarandon plays the mayor's wife, who runs the town's women's shelter, Bill Pullman is John's supervisor, and Josh Lucas plays a cop who is John's friend. Peacock is shooting in May and early June in the Des Moines, Iowa area.

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White Male Heart

In Pre-production

What a title! This Scottish indie promises to be an intense look at rural Highlands life for two young men, Hugh and Aaron, who are locked in a codependent relationship of hunting, drinking and trouble-making. When Hugh falls for a vacationing Londoner, and begins to consider leaving with her, Aaron becomes increasingly volatile, leading to a showdown between the two friends. No word yet on which role Cillian will take.

Based on the novel of the same title by Scottish journalist Ruaridh Nicoll, White Male Heart will be directed by Peter Mackie Burns and will also star Eddie Redmayne, last seen in The Other Boleyn Girl. There is a longish, perhaps spoilerish synopsis of the plot on the site of the production company, Brocken Spectre, who say that shooting will start in the late summer.

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Dalí and I: The Surreal Story

On Hold

Another biopic: Cillian has signed on to play another real life writer, Belgian Stan Lauryssens, who was taken under the wing of legendary Spanish surrealist painter, Salvador Dalí in the artist's older years. Dalí will be played by one of Cillian's idols, the great Al Pacino. Dalí was a well-known eccentric, but Lauryssens sounds like he may be quite the character too: on his website, the crime fiction and history author says that before he met Dalí in the 1980s, he was scamming his way across Europe and America selling fake art, fake diamonds and "non-existent real estate."

Writer/director Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, Lord of War) will be at the helm; he rewrote the orignal script by John Salvati, who'd described it as "a black comedy, a cross between Basquiat and GoodFellas." In an interview with Harper's Bazaar U.K., Cillian stated that Dalí and I "is sort of on an orange light at the moment" due to the upcoming actors' strike. The movie was reported to have begun shooting in Spain and New York in early 2008.

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Rumoured Projects

Telepathy

Production Delayed

According to Production Weekly and many other outlets, Cillian signed on to star in the sci-fi picture Telepathy in May 2006. Reportedly, he was to play identical twin brothers, Josef and Viktor Zalenski, whose telepathic abilities make them the subject of a top-secret Russian experiment on communication between earth and outer space. Miranda Richardson, Sam Neill, and Nathalie Press (Bleak House) were also cast. Shooting was initially scheduled to begin in October 2006, but was delayed. After picking up a new producer and a Russian co-producer at Cannes in 2007, director Lesley Manning is reportedly scouting locations in Russia during the summer with shooting to begin in October 2007. Although Cillian's name has disappeared and reappeared on IMDb's Telepathy page, Manning's website still lists Cillian in the cast (although the actor in the "test shooting" video is definitely not him), and as of June 2007, scriptwriter Steve Volk confirmed that, as far as he knows, Cillian is still attached to the project. Let's hope that news confirming that Telepathy is moving forward pops up soon.

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Perrier's Bounty

In Pre-production

Intandem Films (an international sales company) announced in June 2007 that Cillian was "poised" to sign on for this low-budget Irish indie. The project has been in development for some time now: Variety reported back on 19 June 2005 that Intermission writer Mark O’Rowe was penning it for producer Alan Moloney, who previously co-produced Breakfast on Pluto and Intermission. But in February 2008, The Hollywood Reporter said that James McAvoy was set to star, and Cillian wasn't mentioned. Shooting is supposed to start sometime this year.

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At Swim-Two-Birds

Script Completed

Actor Brendan Gleeson (Breakfast on Pluto, Cold Mountain) has written a screenplay adapting Flann O'Brien's chaotic, multi-layered Irish classic, and many of today's most famous Irish actors have been linked to the project: Colin Farrell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Gabriel Byrne, and Cillian Murphy. Perhaps Cillian will get his wish to play a cowboy—one of the characters in the book is writing a Western whose protagonists turn on him. Director John Boorman (who recently directed Gleeson in A Tiger's Tale) is said to be interested, but it's also been reported that Gleeson wants to direct. No word on how or when this film will be produced, but a read-through (attended by Cillian) was held in Dublin in early 2007.

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The Scent of Books

Status Unknown

Back in June 2006, TMZ reported that director Alejandro Agresti (The Lake House) was negotiating with Cillian to star in The Scent of Books as the younger incarnation of one of three 60-ish writers on whom the story centres. Woody Allen and Christopher Plummer were allegedly in negotiations for two of the three main roles. With Italian-American actor Jason Biggs in talks to play a younger version of one of the writers, most likely the young Woody Allen part, Cillian may have been intended for the role of a younger Plummer. This veteran Canadian actor has been in well over a hundred movies, most famously The Sound of Music and more recently Inside Man, Syriana, and Agresti's The Lake House. Unfortunately, no further news has broken regarding this project.

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Cancelled Projects

Once

In Theatres

As we reported on 16 March 2007, Cillian was originally set to star as the busker in Once, the intimate rock musical written and directed by John Carney (On the Edge). The role ended up going to Carney's friend and ex-bandmate Glen Hansard, leader of Irish rock band The Frames, who had composed most of the music for the film. Once's principals have cited differing reasons for why Cillian backed out, ranging from scheduling conflict to his unwillingness to play opposite a teenage non-actor, Czech musician Markéta Irglová, but Carney told ComingSoon.net that the casting decision was made after both he and Cillian realized it would be hard for anyone but the composer to pull off the songs. We don't know if Cillian actually signed, and then broke, a contract, but Hansard told Entertainment Weekly that Cillian was preparing for the film with Carney and Irglová, then pulled out ten days prior to the shoot. Interestingly, Hansard mentioned to Montreal's Gazette that prior to leaving the project, Cillian was going to serve as a producer.

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Red Light Runners

Halted in Production

One project we won't be seeing Cillian in is Red Light Runners (2004). Starring Harvey Keitel and Vinnie Jones, and produced by Michael Madsen, Cillian shot three weeks on this gangster film before their financing disappeared and the project was scrapped.

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