First movie still of Rosamund Pike with David Oyelowo in A United Kingdom

A first look of a new production still has been released (via Pathe) of Rosamund Pike with her Jack Reacher co-star David Oyelowo in their upcoming new film, A United Kingdom directed by Amma Assante (Belle) and produced by Oyelowo. Rosamund plays Ruth Williams, a white British bank clerk and married to David Oyelowo's character Seretse Khama, a member of the royal family in Bechuanaland, a former English colony in Africa that would become Botswana. The interracial couple shocked the world in the late 1940s when they fell in love and got married.

The film is slated for a 2016 release, but no theatrical release date has been set. Jack Davenport (Norrington of POTC movies), Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter movies and most recently in Belle directed by Assante), and Laura Carmichael (aka Lady Edith Crawley in Downton Abbey) also star.

Read more info. about A United Kingdom and how Rosamund was cast into this movie below...


From EW:

Gear up for the greatest love story you’ve never heard of. It’s the late 1940s and Prince Seretse Khama, the heir to the throne of Botswana has fallen in love and married a young, white English girl named Ruth Williams. Their interracial love affair is so scandalous, Seretse and his bride must spend six years in exile in London, banned from Khama’s own country because he married a white woman. 

In addition to collecting producers during every film Oyelowo shot (Rick McCallum from Red Tails, Brunson Green from The Help), he had to recruit Pike to play his bride. That opportunity came when Oyelowo was on set in Uganda and discovered via the trades that Pike’s upcoming movie, The Deep Blue Good-By had been shuttered suddenly after her costar Christian Bale tore up the ligaments in his knee.  

 “I went straight to my computer and I sent her images of these two people with the note ‘Take a look. Tell me what you think,’” he says. “She wrote me back the most impassioned e-mail: ‘I don’t know who these people are. I don’t know what they’ve done with their lives. But I’m so moved by them, tell me more.’” Read full article here.

Also, THR reports that the drama, a passion project for Oyelowo and directed by British director Amma Asante (Belle), will unveil the scandalous side to this real-life union.

The film — among the prestige titles making its market bow in Berlin next month, with Pathe International financing and selling — tells the "epic love story" of Seretse Khama (Oyelowo), a member of the royal family in Bechuanaland, a former English colony in Africa that would become Botswana, who shocked the world when he married white British bank clerk Ruth Williams (Pike) in 1948, at a time when interracial marriage was illegal. 

Written by Guy Hibbert from Susan Williams' book Colour Bar, A United Kingdom is produced by Oyelowo, alongside Rick McCallum (who produced the Star Wars prequels), Pathe's Cameron McCracken, Brunson Green, Justin Moore-Lewy and Charlie Mason.Pathe will distribute the film in the U.K. and France. Full article here.