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With a score composed by Edward Shearmur that
brilliantly parodies the greatest espionage classics of the silver-screen,
Johnny English includes tracks from mega-star Robbie Williams,
70’s icons ABBA, all-girl string quartet Bond, Moloko, one of
the hottest bands of the moment, and Brazil’s pop phenomenon,
Sandy & Junior. “A Man For All Seasons” was written
by Robbie Williams himself in collaboration with Oscar-winning composer
Hans Zimmer.
Click here for more...
It has become custom within
the movie business to adapt successful ventures from other mediums
(books, plays, television series, even popular songs) into film projects.
Johnny English may be one of the first to adapt a film version from
a commercial.
Click here for more...
In an uncertain world, few things are as dependable
as the British Secret Service. World-renowned for the calibre of its
agents, the cutting-edge technology utilized in its weaponry and its
international intelligence-gathering web, it is one of the last bastions
of honour manned with committed defenders of “the truth”.
So when an unthinkable plan to filch the country’s beloved Crown
Jewels comes to the Service’s attention, the best man for the
job, the crème de la crème of the organization’s
supersleuths, Agent Number One, is quickly assigned to the case and
is almost as quickly dispatched to six feet under.
Click here for more...
To capture the spirit of Johnny English,
London-born Shearmur has gone back to his film scoring roots; he began
his apprenticeship with the award-winning composer Michael Kamen in
1984, playing keyboards on Kamen's score for the James Bond film License
to Kill and later helping to orchestrate the music for such films
as Die Hard and Lethal Weapon.
Click here for more...
Click here...
Click here...
 
©
2003 Universal Studios, Photos by: David Scheinmann
With a score composed by Edward Shearmur that
brilliantly parodies the greatest espionage classics of the silver-screen,
Johnny English includes tracks from mega-star Robbie Williams,
70’s icons ABBA, all-girl string quartet Bond, Moloko, one of
the hottest bands of the moment, and Brazil’s pop phenomenon,
Sandy & Junior. “A Man For All Seasons” was written
by Robbie Williams himself in collaboration with Oscar-winning composer
Hans Zimmer.
The idea for Robbie to sing his first theme song to a movie came out
of a casual meeting with Working Title Music Supervisor, Nick Angel
and Williams’ co-manager, Tim Clark. Hans Zimmer was already
on board to compose the song and Nick suggested that Robbie would
be perfect to sing it and write the lyrics. Robbie loved the idea
and got to work immediately.
With critically acclaimed scores for Gladiator, The Lion
King, Mission: Impossible and many more box office hits
under his belt, Zimmer is also not a stranger to the world of pop.
Bond are also featured, with two pieces on the soundtrack and with
a cameo appearance on screen. “Kismet”, taken from their
two million selling debut album Born and composed by band member
Gay-Yee Westerhoff, starts in a sombre mood and builds to a string-packed
crescendo. Their second contribution is a salsa version of Edward
Shearmur’s “Theme from Johnny English” to which they
add their virtuoso playing and rock-style performance to the deliberately
reminiscent melody.
Another contemporary touch is added by Moloko’s “The Only
Ones” and a shot of retro-disco comes courtesy of Abba’s
“Does Your Mother Know”. The Moloko track, taken from their
recently released fourth studio album Statues, showcases the
band's electronic wizardry with its trademark chilled-out soul sound.
One of the most successful Latin American groups of all time, Sandy
& Junior, add a flourish to the movie with “Bang, Bang, You’re
the One!”. Multi-instrumentalist Junior and his sister Sandy
have released thirteen chart-topping CDs to date and gained platinum,
gold and even diamond discs for their 12-million plus sales. They
have collaborated with international artists including Andrea Bocelli
and Enrique Iglesias and their live shows have consistently smashed
box office records — still aged just 20 and 19, they are a true
pop phenomenon.
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It has become custom within the movie business
to adapt successful ventures from other mediums (books, plays, television
series, even popular songs) into film projects. Johnny English may
be one of the first to adapt a film version from a commercial.
Between 1992 and 1997, gifted comic actor Atkinson was featured in
a series of popular British credit card Barclaycard commercials, playing
a somewhat accident-prone spy. It was at that time Atkinson got the
idea about making a feature film based on the character from the television
advertisements.
On illustrating the character of English, Atkinson says, “Johnny
loves being a secret agent so much that he oversteps himself. He always
thinks that he’s better at something than he actually is. He’s
the sort of person who, in a hurdle race, would clear the first hurdles
extremely well, but he’d be waving at the crowd and he would
trip and fall on the last hurdle. It’s the last ten percent of
his activity which is fatally flawed.”
With the script in place, the filmmakers set about finding the right
actors for the roles. One key piece of casting for the film was Bough,
Johnny English’s partner.
Howitt remembers, “The character of Bough is very difficult to
play as he is in every scene with English. He cannot be the ‘straight’
man to English’s ‘funny’ man, but has to be someone
who complements English’s behaviour and who is funny in his own
right. He has to represent the audience so that we have someone in
the room with English, experiencing all the things he is going through.”
After a number of actors were seen, Ben Miller proved to be the person
that was right for the part.
The filmmakers were looking for a French actor to play Pascal Sauvage,
so initially had overlooked John Malkovich until his agent suggested
him.
Central to the success of the film was the casting of a strong and
intelligent actress in the role of Lorna. Australian singer Natalie
Imbruglia had only recently decided that she would like to juggle
her singing career with acting when she received a copy of the script
through her music company and was called in for a reading.
With script, cast and crew in place, Johnny English started
principal photography in July of 2002. The film shot for fourteen
weeks, filming at Shepperton Studios, on location in London and St
Albans, and finally setting down in Monte Carlo for two days to complete
filming the final scene.
www.uip.com
back to top
In an uncertain world, few things are as dependable as the British
Secret Service. World-renowned for the calibre of its agents, the
cutting-edge technology utilized in its weaponry and its international
intelligence-gathering web, it is one of the last bastions of honour
manned with committed defenders of “the truth”.
So when an unthinkable plan to filch the country’s beloved Crown
Jewels comes to the Service’s attention, the best man for the
job, the crème de la crème of the organization’s
supersleuths, Agent Number One, is quickly assigned to the case and
is almost as quickly dispatched to six feet under.
Unfortunately for the British Secret Service, virtually every other
able member of its esteemed ranks soon joins Agent Number One in the
afterworld… nasty business, bombing a funeral.
Who could be behind such a diabolical plot? Perhaps the same twisted
mind bent on stealing the Crown Jewels?
Now, there is only one man remaining who can even hope to protect
his country, avenge the elimination of all of the Secret Service’s
spies and uncover the fiend behind the fiendish plot to make off with
the lasting symbols of the once supreme British empire, the Crown
Jewels.
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To capture the spirit of Johnny English,
London-born Shearmur has gone back to his film scoring roots; he began
his apprenticeship with the award-winning composer Michael Kamen in
1984, playing keyboards on Kamen's score for the James Bond film License
to Kill and later helping to orchestrate the music for such films
as Die Hard and Lethal Weapon. He has since laid down
the scores to some of the biggest action movies produced over the
last few years including Charlie's Angels and K-Pax
and has firmly established himself as one of Hollywood's foremost
film composers. A music scholar at Eton College and a one-time student
at the Royal College of Music, Shearmur’s debut as a film composer
came in 1991 with his highly acclaimed score for The Cement Garden.
Though classically trained (he began singing in the choir of London’s
Westminster Abbey at the age of seven), Shearmur has been active in
the realms of pop and rock, too, working with the likes of Annie Lennox,
Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton and Bryan Adams, both on stage and in the
recording studio.
The Johnny English score is performed by The London Metropolitan
Orchestra and The Johnny English Band, and conducted by Edward Shearmur.
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1 A Man For All Seasons — Robbie
Williams
2 Theme from Johnny English
3 Russian Affairs
4 A Man of Sophistication
5 Kismet — Bond
6 Truck Chase
7 The Only Ones — Moloko
8 Parachute Drop
9 Pascal's Evil Plan
10 Theme from Johnny English (Salsa Version) — Bond
11 Off the Case
12 Café Conversation
13 Into Pascal's Lair
14 Does Your Mother Know — ABBA
15 For England
16 Riviera Highway
17 Agent No.1
18 Bang Bang, You're the One — Sandy & Junior (only on the
Latin America release)
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Johnny English Rowan Atkinson
Special Agent Lorna Campbell Natalie Imbruglia
Bough Ben Miller
Pascal Sauvage John Malkovich
Peter Howitt Director
Edward Shearmur Original music
Neal Purvis & Robert Wade, William Davies Original screenplay
Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Mark Huffam Producers
ABOUT THE CAST
Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Rowan Atkinson (Johnny English) has become
one of the best-known British comic talents of his generation.
In 1983, he embarked with writer Richard Curtis on their situation
tragedy Blackadder for the BBC. Over the ensuing five years,
the four Blackadder series won three British Academy Awards,
an International Emmy, three ACE awards and personal awards for his
performance, including Best Entertainment Performance.
On stage, Atkinson took the lead in Larry Shue’s The Nerd
at the Aldwych Theatre in 1985. In the following year, he mounted
a new one-man show in the West End and, following a sell-out season,
it was transferred to Broadway. The show went on to tour successfully.
In 1988, he undertook a six-month run in the West End, starring in
The Sneeze, a collection of humorous one-act plays by Anton
Chekhov.
Atkinson’s next major television undertaking was the creation
of the silent comedy series Mr. Bean for ITV and HBO.
In 1995, Atkinson starred in the lead role of Inspector Raymond Fowler
in the first series of Tiger Aspect’s number one rated situation
comedy, The Thin Blue Line (written by Ben Elton); a second
series was produced in the summer of 1996.
Atkinson has appeared in a number of films, the most recent being
the international hit Scooby-Doo. His other film credits include
Never Say Never Again with Sean Connery; The Tall Guy
with Jeff Goldblum; Nicolas Roeg’s The Witches; and Steven
Wright’s The Appointments of Dennis Jennings, which won
the 1989 Oscar for Best Short. He also co-produced and appeared in
Bean — The Ultimate Disaster Movie, a film produced by
Working Title in association with Tiger Aspect.
Natalie Imbruglia (Lorna Campbell) grew up in Berkeley Vale, a small
beach town north of Sydney. By the time she was 16, she landed a part
in the successful Australian continuing drama seriesNeighbours.
At 19, she left Ramsay Street for London to pursue a music career
and soon after she had a recording contract with BMG.
In 1997, Imbruglia released her debut album, Left of Middle,
which sold over six million units. “Torn”, the album’s
first hit, topped the charts across Europe, selling more than a million
copies in the U.K., and is one of the longest No.1’s on record
in the States. Johnny English marks her feature film debut.
Ben Miller (Bough) is best known as half of the comedy duo Armstrong
and Miller, partnering with Xander Armstrong. On television, Miller
has also played leading roles in the ITV comedy/drama Passion Killers,
the ITV thriller The Blind Date and the Scottish BAFTA-winning
comedy/drama series Coming Soon.
Miller began his career with the British theatrical troupe Cambridge
Footlights. He has made many appearances at the Edinburgh Festival.
More recently, Miller has concentrated on film roles. Making his film
debut as debauched aristocrat Lord Dixon in Jake Scott’s Plunkett
and Macleane, Miller has since gone on to play Thai-boxing male
model Johnny Two-Dogs in There’s Only One Jimmy Grimble,
an obstructive hotel manager in Jez Butterworth’s Birthday
Girl and the anally retentive computer hacker Colin in John Duigan’s
The Parole Officer. Most recently, he appeared with Michael Caine
in Conor McPherson’s The Actors and with Greta Scacchi
in Guy Jenkins’ Jeffrey Archer biopic, The Truth.
John Malkovich (Pascal Sauvage) is one of the leading actors of his
generation and an important figure in world cinema. In 1976, Malkovich
co-founded the soon-to-be-famous Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. He
appeared on Broadway alongside Dustin Hoffman in the 1984 revival
of Death of a Salesman. While he was working on Broadway, he
made his film debut, playing a blind transient in Places in the
Heart (1984), which earned him an Academy Award nomination. That
same year, he also had a starring role in the highly acclaimed The
Killing Fields.
Malkovich is perhaps best known to audiences for his acclaimed portrayal
of Vicomte de Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons. He received both
Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for his portrayal of the political
assassin in In the Line of Fire (1993).
John Malkovich’s long and impressive film career highlights include
leading roles in Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun,
Jane Campion’s Portrait of a Lady, Bernardo Bertolucci’s
The Sheltering Sky, Randall Wallace’s The Man In the
Iron Mask, Spike Jonze’s cult film hit Being John Malkovich,
Elias Merhige’s Shadow of a Vampire, Liliana Cavani’s
Ripley’s Game and David Levien and Brian Koppelman’s
Knock Around Guys.
Malkovich is also known as an accomplished director and producer,
most recently directing and producing The Dancer Upstairs,
starring Javier Bardem.
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