The Full Sammy

Robert Carlyle has signed up to play poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner fame, in a movie of the poet's life to be released next year. The film, Pandemonium, is being made by Mariner Films for the BBC and will explore the relationship between Coleridge and William Wordsworth - to be played by Ian Hart - and the incestuous relationship between Wordsworth and his sister. The director will be Julien Temple (Absolute Beginners). It's another film that seems to have sprung from the BBC's new commitment to bigger budget films. In case you're wondering why they chose "Trainspotting" Carlyle, David Thompson, the head of BBC films, said that much of the drama will centre on Coleridge's addiction to opium.