The festive and light-hearted feature about the most iconic Christmas story ever written and the genius behind it, The Man Who Invented Christmas starring Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey, Beauty and the Beast), will be released in Irish cinemas on Friday 1st December. The film tells the story of how Dickens wrote his classic book A Christmas Carol and how he dreamed up the character of Scrooge.
Directed by Bharat Nalluri (Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Spooks), the film sees Stevens play a young Charles Dickens alongside Jonathan Pryce (Game of Thrones) as his father and Christopher Plummer (The Sound of Music) as the stony-hearted Ebenezer Scrooge and has a strong Irish supporting cast including David McSavage, Ger Ryan and Anna Murphy.
In 1843, Dickens was a literary rock star, but struggling financially after the slow sales of his previous novel, Martin Chuzzlewit. Seized with the vision of a story that would fire the hearts of humanity, Dickens pitched his publishers A Christmas Carol, but they passed. Desperate, Dickens declared he would publish it himself. Slipping into the world of his novel, he spent the next six weeks laughing and arguing with his characters, acting out scenes like a madman on the streets of London for hours on end. His family and friends worried he was going insane, but Dickens prevailed and finished just before Christmas, creating a masterpiece which gave birth to the Christmas we know and love today.
The film, which was filmed in Ireland, was backed by the Irish Film Board and co-produced by Dublin-based Parallel Films.
The film will have its Irish premiere at the Cork Film Festival later this month where it is set to open the festival.
A film for all ages, The Man Who Invented Christmas opens in Irish cinemas from Friday 1st December via Wildcard Distribution.