Another celebrated Northern Ireland playwright, Graham Reid, is involved in writing a screenplay for a rival film project. "I am sure the people who want to make these movies are trying to catch the public eye," the 81-year-old North Antrim MP said as he prepared to become Stormont First Minister next Tuesday. "I have survived worse than that in my day.
But no, we are not making any movie. "I do hope, though, we will have the material for a good movie after we have been in office for some time." Mitchell, who is writing the other script, has received rave reviews in Dublin and London for a number of acclaimed hard-hitting plays about loyalism, including As The Beast Sleeps.
He was forced out of his home in Rathcoole, north Belfast, by loyalist paramilitaries angered by his work. "I`m not flattered by this at all," he said. "I don`t think a man in public life, if he behaves himself, needs to worry.
"It never has done me a button of harm and no man has had worse publicity than I have had." Liam Neeson, who played the Irish revolutionary Michael Collins in a film directed by Neil Jordan, has said in interviews that he would love to play the DUP leader. One Hollywood-based actor who was ruling himself out of contention was Patrick Bergin, who was in Belfast today to celebrate the life of Irish trade union legend Jim Larkin.
The Dubliner, who starred in Patriot Games and Sleeping With The Enemy, played another unionist, Edward Carson, in a play with Northern Ireland actor Adrian Dunbar, based on the trial of Oscar Wilde. Asked if he would be tempted by the role of the DUP leader, Bergin quipped: "No. I think I am too good-looking.
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