Directed by John Crowley, We Live In Time presents a love story where time is in short supply
By Charles Gant
When SunnyMarch commissioned playwright and screenwriter Nick Payne to adapt a book they had in development with Studiocanal, the UK production company might have been fazed by the creative pivot he eventually proposed. “He turned around one day and said, ‘Can I do something else? I’ve got a better idea, and I really, really want to do it.’”
SunnyMarch head of film Leah Clarke is relating the course of events that led to the creation of contemporary British romantic drama We Live In Time, scripted by Payne, directed by John Crowley (Brooklyn), produced by SunnyMarch in association with Shoebox, and starring Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh.
“We were delighted at the idea of Nick doing an original for us, especially something that was romantic and meaningful,” adds Clarke. SunnyMarch took the proposal back to Studiocanal, “and they were very gracious, and were up for it”.
That smooth course of events might seem surprising, given the current focus on adapting existing source material or biographical/historical subjects for the screen – which in Studiocanal’s case include recent hits Back To Black, Wicked Little Letters and The Outrun. And Clarke agrees it was hard to pitch comp titles for the film to Studiocanal and fellow backers A24 (which has North American rights) and Film4. She mentions Silver Linings Playbook and Blue Valentine.
“But those films are American, and that kind of indie [original romantic drama] space doesn’t really exist here [in the UK]. So the only way it was going to get made is if it had two big stars who had terrific chemistry.”
SunnyMarch’s next step was to attach a director, and it reached out to Crowley, director of Payne’s play The Same Deep Water As Me at the Donmar Warehouse in 2013. Payne is best known for play Constellations, which was first produced at the Royal Court Theatre in 2012 and offers a playful perspective on love while stirring in fizzy ideas about science and cosmology as well as a storyline involving terminal illness and assisted dying.