THE YOUNG VICTORIA PRODUCTION NOTES - Thecia

photography Hagen Bogdanski (The Lives of Others), production designer Patrice
Vermette (C.R.A.Z.Y), Academy Award® winning costume designer Sandy Powell (The
Aviator, Shakespeare in Love), Academy Award® winning make-up and hair designer
Jenny Shircore (Amazing Grace, Elizabeth) and editor Jill Bilcock (Moulin Rouge!,
Elizabeth). Music is composed by Ilan Eshkeri and the music supervisor is Maureen
Crowe.
Vallée made his feature film debut with Black List, a strikingly stylish thriller honored with
nine Genie Award nominations (Canada’s “Oscars”). His next feature C.R.A.Z.Y., a
beguiling coming of age tale won 11 Genie Awards including Best Motion Picture and
Best Director as well as 15 Jutra Awards, the Best Canadian Film prize at the Toronto
International Film Festival in 2005, the Golden Reel Award as Canada’s top box office
performer and screened at some 20 international film festivals around the globe.
Vallée directed The Young Victoria from a script penned by Academy Award winning
writer Julian Fellowes. Fellowes’ screenplay for Gosford Park earned him numerous
accolades including an Academy Award® received in 2002. His other screenwriting
credits include Mira Nair’s Vanity Fair and his directorial debut Separate Lies starring Tom
Wilkinson.
Introduced to the project by Sarah Ferguson, The Duchess of York, The Young Victoria is
a GK Films production, produced by Graham King, Martin Scorsese, Tim Headington and
Sarah Ferguson, The Duchess of York. King and Scorsese won Best Picture and Best
Achievement in Directing Oscars® respectively for their recent collaboration on the box
office hit The Departed. GK Films’ Colin Vaines is Executive Producer and the company’s
Denis O’Sullivan is the film’s co-producer.
PRODUCTION STORY
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Academy Award® winning British producer Graham King was in production on The
Departed, when the idea for The Young Victoria was presented to him.
"A mutual friend arranged a meeting with Sarah Ferguson and she pitched several
projects to me. She was full of ideas and she had one about Queen Victoria. She said
she always wanted to show the queen in a different way to how she was commonly
perceived, as always in mourning. The idea stayed with me and I talked to Marty
(Scorsese) about it and he pointed out it had never been done before. I've been trying to
make a film in the UK for 15 years and I'd never found the right script or even the right
material. I'd never had the emotion or the passion to make a film in the UK before now.
But this felt right.”
Oscar® winning screen-writer Julian Fellowes heard about the project early on and
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