West is best.
Ireland is set to get a dose of the Hollywood treatment in the near future as a new, star-studded production gets set to take over the west.
Wild Mountain Thyme, an adaptation of Broadway hit Outside Mullingar, stars Jon Hamm, Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan, Christopher Walken and acclaimed Dublin theatre actress Dearbhla Molloy, and will commence shooting in the north of Mayo at the end of September.
According to Deadline, the movie, which is also set in Ireland, finds Dornan’s character Anthony – “always out in the fields working,” – worn down by his tough father, played by Walken.
Walken’s character has threatened to give the family farm away to his American cousin Adam (that would be Hamm). Meanwhile, Rosemary, as played by Emily Blunt, holds a childhood grudge towards Anthony, but, wouldn’t you know it, sparks fly between them.
So it’s a romantic comedy set in and around rural Ireland with Hollywood stars on board, almost 70 years from The Quiet Man, famously filmed in the village of Cong in the south of Mayo.
We get one of these every now and then, questionable accents and all, and the bar set by both P.S. I Love You and Leap Year in recent times shouldn’t be too hard to clear, so let’s hope they make a good fist of this one, eh?
If we’re honest, the prospect of Christopher Walken milling around in the west is worth the entire production budget alone.
An official release date for Wild Mountain Thyme has yet to be revealed.
JOE has reached out to Irish production company Port Pictures for comment.
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