Having handed Veep off to another show-runner after several years of success, Armando Iannucci has been busy developing his next project, which stays in the world of politics and satire, but goes a little further back in time. He now has Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor, Olga Kurylenko, Timothy Dalton and more ready to star in The Death Of Stalin.
And that's just the tip of the actorly iceberg, as Toby Kebbell, Michael Palin, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy Considine and Andrea Riseborough are also all aboard for a comedy that adapts the French graphic novel by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin, itself based on a true story. In the wake of Stalin's death, there is fierce infighting as to who will seize supreme power, with intimidation, betrayal and lust behind closed doors. Buscemi is set as Khrushchev, with Tambor as Malenkov and Dalton as Zhukov.
Iannucci wrote this one with regular collaborator David Schneider alongside In The Loop and Veep's Ian Martin. Production is scheduled to start next month and the director hopes to have it ready for next year's Cannes fest.