Dublin-based Irish Blood producer Deadpan Pictures and Canadian Shaftesbury Films will once again team up on The Roaring Banshees, a film adaptation of the hit play by John Morton and Peter McGan. This film depicts an Irish rebel army exclusively in Chicago in the 1920s, dedicated to women who continue to pursue crime lives. The series is one of the projects chosen to participate in the Mia Market in Rome, which will be held from October 6th to 10th.
“The Roaring Banshees” begins in Ireland in the aftermath of an attempted assassination of a powerful political central figure by a secret rebel force known as the Banshee. The members are forced to flee on a ship to America, but are separated, but only reunited in Chicago in the cold winter of 1923. Here they plan to lie quietly and not get caught up in trouble until the former wartime commander negotiates a safe return, but that plan quickly fails and returns to Ireland become impossible.
In Prohibition Chicago, women commit crimes and sell moonshine to Irish mobs as they are chased by police and pursuing Irish assassins. But as business grows, they bring trouble from brutal gangsters, corrupt cops, and their own increasingly unpredictable nature, describing the series’ creators as “the classic rise and fall gangster tale of immigrants who bet their rights on a land of hope and glory.”
Prior to the MIA Market, Deadpan Pictures co-founder Paul Donovan mentioned series such as Peaky Blinders and Babylon Berlin when explaining the appeal of The Roaring Banshees.
“It’s a cinematic, visual, high-end, dramatic, classic gangster story, but it’s also interesting and fun,” he said. “We don’t take ourselves too seriously here. We go out to have fun.”
Donovan remembered the first time he encountered the play that underpinned the series at the Dublin theatre festival. “It was a packed show, and the audience laughed, cried, wreaked, screamed, barked at the characters,” he said.
The producer, who once collaborated with Morton on the Victorian Acorn TV period drama Dead Still, praised Morton’s work, saying “the work always contained humor and entertainment in nature,” quickly acknowledged the possibility of a film adaptation of the original.
“A lot of the action was necessarily off stage. It gave the impression that there were explosions, firefights and all sorts of other great action scenes, but I didn’t actually see them,” he said. After the show ended, Donovan met up with Morton and McGann and pitched, claiming that these action sets would look “great” on screen, telling the two of them, “Let’s make an epic, brave, ambitious, fun, cinematic television production.”
Donovan said the series depicts rebel forces struggling to get a fresh start in America, far from the causes they have worked hard for their lives “from their comfort zones.”
“They were elite forces who fought in the Irish War of Independence, but they were on the bad side in the subsequent Civil War. So they are very enthusiastic about the cause and justification for the violence and mayhem that they do,” the producer said. “But things have changed, because they won’t fight against this cause anymore. They are no longer soldiers. They are redirected towards a more gangster lifestyle, and it’s a grayer, moral world they’re engaged in.”
“That muddy area is a fertile ground for drama,” he added.
The Roaring Banshees is written by Morton and McGan and directed by Neesa Hardyman, who has been credited for Netflix series Untamed, Jessica Jones and Hulu drama We Are The Lucky Ones. The 8×60-foot series was filmed in Ireland and Hamilton, Ontario, and described Donovan as a compelling substitute for Chicago in the 1920s.
Deadpan Pictures and Toronto-based production company Shaftesbury Films have previously partnered on Acorn TV’s mystery drama series Irish Blood starring Alicia Silverstone, which was recently renewed for season 2.
“Whether we are both of us, we can bring up to 45% of our funds to the negotiations,” Donovan said. “There’s an established relationship there, and the Irish-Canada collaborative work is very well between different sources of funding. For MIA, our current challenge is to get partners who can help raise the rest of the funds.”
The MIA Market in Rome will run from October 6th to 10th.
