Timothy Spall to star in ITV drama about the Hatton Garden jewellery heist
The real-life story of the spectacular raid committed by a group of elderly criminals is to be dramatised by Little Boy Blue writer Jeff Pope
Timothy Spall is to front a new ITV drama about the audacious raid on a high-security Hatton Garden jewellery safe deposit service two years ago by a group of elderly criminals.
Spall, known for an array of roles including Peter Pettigrew in the Harry Potter films and the eponymous Mr Turner in the 2014 biopic about the painter, is expected to play one of the gang involved in the jewellery and cash theft at the heart of London’s diamond district over the 2015 Easter Bank Holiday weekend.
He will be joined by War & Peace star Kenneth Cranham and Brian F O’Byrne, who was recently seen as the grieving father of murdered schoolboy Rhys Jones in Little Boy Blue – ITV's true-life drama written by Jeff Pope, who is dramatising Hatton Garden along with co-writer Terry Winsor.
ITV has not yet confirmed who the actors will play but it has disclosed that David Hayman, Alex Norton, Ian Puleston-Davies, Geoff Bell and Nasser Memarzia will also be in the cast.
The four-part drama will tell the inside story of how the men pulled off the ambitious robbery on the Hatton Garden Safety Deposit Company before they were eventually brought to justice.
Pope, who is also head of factual drama at ITV Studios, said: “This is one of the highest profile crimes of the last decade and we wanted to understand what had happened – and why it had happened. The research threw up some fascinating detail and blew away many of the misconceptions about this story. It was not about a bunch of 'loveable old blokes', many box holders lost everything in the raid and we will reflect this. But the planning was clever and the characters involved unique.”
Filming will begin later this month in London for a broadcast either at the end of this year or early next year. The new commission joins no fewer than three films about the robbery that are either already released or in production.
