Jennifer Harby, 'BBC The Lost King: Legal action 'likely' against Richard III film' BBC News 9th October 2022.
A university academic has said he is likely to take legal action against the makers of a new film about Richard III, which he said was "littered with inaccuracies". Richard Taylor was part of the University of Leicester team that found and identified the king 10 years ago. A character bearing his name features in the film The Lost King, starring Steve Coogan and Sally Hawkins. [...] The film, released on Friday - which was also co-written by Mr Coogan - stars Oscar nominee and Golden Globe winning Ms Hawkins in the lead role of Philippa Langley, an ordinary woman who - it says - "took on the country's most eminent historians, forcing them to think again".[...] In its promotional material, it said it was the "remarkable, true story" of the find.The university - which said it funded the bulk of the excavations and subsequent research to identify the king's remains - said they were never consulted over their depiction by the film-makers.
Mr Coogan has told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he believed the university had "played this quite badly". "Had they at the start been generous towards Philippa, and elevated her to the front and centre position, which is where she deserves to be, this film wouldn't have been necessary. "But at every turn they marginalised her, edged her out, because she wasn't cut from the right cloth." Dan Winch, the film's producer, said the filmmakers had had contact with the university, despite the institution claiming otherwise.[...] "We were very courteous and respectful but we explained if we were to engage too far over the line then it wouldn't be the story we wanted to tell - that's Philippa's story. "It wouldn't be the film we wanted to make [...]."What? What they mean was that archaeology is done by archaeologists, and if you are reporting archaeology, you write about what archaeologists do.
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