Michael Winterbottom is busy gathering a solid cast to surround Steve Coogan for his latest film, King Of Soho. He’s just nabbed Anna Friel, Tamsin Egerton and Imogen Poots to co-star.
Soho finds Winterbottom back in 24 Hour Party People mode, using the real story of a larger-than-life personality to drive a film. In this case, that is club owner and porn publisher Paul Raymond, whose power and influence across London’s seedier side grew between the late 1950s and the early 1990s. Kicking off his career as a 22-year-old mind reader on Clacton Pier, he graduated to running touring revue shows and launched the first British strip club. He also published the likes of Razzle and Mayfair. Dubbed the “King of Soho” by the press, he had run ins with the Lord Chamberlain’s office, the police, and was the target of more than one extortion attempt.
Control writer Matt Greenhalgh has written the script, and Friel will play Raymond’s first wife, Jean Bradley, Egerton his glamour model girlfriend Fiona Richmond and Poots his daughter Debbie, who died of a heroin overdose in 1992.