Cannes film festival: Armando Iannucci to go big-budget

BBC Films enjoyed a warm glow at the premiere of the joyous film version of Tamara Drewe, directed by Stephen Frears, which it backed. Christine Langan, head of BBC Films, told me about some future projects. Dustin Hoffman will direct his first feature, while Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon, The Queen) is to make a film that "riffs on Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde", the 1900 play which centres on 10 interlocking scenes between pairs of lovers. The film is set to shoot in the spring. Meanwhile, Armando Iannucci is, according to Langan, scaling up to "quite a big-budget film: about $20m (£14m), as opposed to In the Loop, which cost around £4m". The film (working title: Out the Window) is at a very early stage – finance is still being put together – but, she said, "It's not set in the political world. I don't think. I might eat my words yet."