Walk the Blue Fields
Movie productions don’t get much more Irish than the forthcoming romantic drama Walk the Blue Fields, based on the book by celebrated Wicklow-born writer Claire Keegan.
Playwright Conor McPherson (The Weir) is adapting Walk the Blue Fields, which will be directed by Irish-born John Crowley (Brooklyn, The Goldfinch).
Walk the Blue Fields is about a Catholic priest who was once in love with a woman, who then has to officiate at the wedding of the very same woman. Other Irish talent in the cast includes Ciaran Hinds, Andrew Scott and Tom Cullen, while Emily Blunt takes the lead role as the bride. Walk the Blue Fields was filmed in Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare, and is expected to be released by Netflix late next year or in early 2028.
The House of Guinness
And in Netflix Irish news, House of Guinness has been renewed by the streaming giant for a second season.
This sweeping series portrays the offspring of Dublin beer baron Arthur Guinness, and their public and private battles as they try to run his lucrative empire. The first season had powerful moments, veering into the Irish countryside and exploring the broader 19th-century movement for independence from Britain. Still, many of the family’s personal travails were melodramatic, to say the least.
Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight will return to write House of Guinness episodes. Filming – in Dublin and Manchester – is set to begin in the new year.
Sense and Sensibility
Newcomer Bodhi Rae Breatnach joins fellow Irish actresses Caitriona Balfe and Fiona Shaw in a new movie adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic Sense and Sensibility, to be released in October.
Later this year, the 15-year-old Limerick native will join Golden Globe winner Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Willem Dafoe in the spooky December film Werwulf, then also appear in the 2027 release A Head Full of Ghosts, starring David Harbor (Stranger Things) and BAFTA winner Rebecca Hall. Balfe, meanwhile, will be seen later this year in The Long Winter, based on a short story by Irish master Colm Tóibín. At the same time, Shaw is expected to appear in the upcoming second season of the Apple TV thriller Presumed Innocent, starring Jake Gyllenhaal.
Mobland & Tales of Murder
First, there’s Pierce Brosnan currently starring as kingpin Conrad Harrigan in the Paramount+ thriller series Mobland. Alongside his scheming wife Maeve (Helen Mirren) and troubled son Kevin (Paddy Considine), Conrad works with a ruthless family fixer played by Tom Hardy to rule over – or at least stay alive in – the London underworld. Season 2 of Mobland was released in September, with filming for a third season already about to get underway.
Then there’s Tall Tales & Murder, based on the Dublin book series by Caimh McDonnell, and adapted for RTE and BBC by Irish writer Stuart Carolan (Love/Hate). Tall Tales & Murder is a genre-bending comedy-drama that unfolds in different time periods, and stars Aidan Gillen (The Wire, Game of Thrones) and Packy Lee (Peaky Blinders) alongside Aisling O’Sullivan and Philippa Dunne (Motherland).
The Troubles on Film
Roscommon actor and comedian Chris O’Dowd is set to play journalist (and Irish America magazine co-founder) Niall O’Dowd in a forthcoming thriller about the 1990s Northern Ireland peace process.
Entitled Ceasefire, the film will be written and directed by Belfast-born Academy Award nominee Terry George, and is set to begin filming in Ireland later this year.
Jane Fonda, Ciaran Hinds and John C. Reilly also reportedly have key roles in the film, which will explore how the Tipperary-born New York City-based journalist and publisher helped coordinate Gerry Adams’ U.S. visits in the early 1990s.
This was a key first step in a process that culminated in the 1994 IRA ceasefire and Good Friday Agreement four years later.
“Through both Irish America magazine, and the Irish Voice newspaper and his extensive political connections in the United States, [Niall O’Dowd] became one of the most influential Irish-American figures of the peace process era, helping build links between Irish republicanism, Washington and Irish-America at a crucial moment in modern Irish history,” the Irish Post reports, adding: “The film adds to a growing body of screen drama examining the Troubles and the long peace negotiations that followed, but its focus on the Irish-American political network behind the scenes gives it a distinctive angle.”
It’s a Wonderful Life Redux
Finally, the winter holiday season is almost here, which means yet another year of watching the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life. Super-fans of that classic may also want to check out Jimmy, a movie about star Jimmy Stewart’s World War II experiences, and how they influenced the making of It’s a Wonderful Life.
Jimmy, set for release in November, was shot in Ireland with local extras and production crews.
A Munster-based company called Extra Extra has built an entire business around providing background acting talent for the many movies and TV shows now filmed in Ireland.
For Jimmy, “about 35 extras … boarded a 6:30 a.m. private coach to West Cork Studios one dark cold morning,” the Irish Examiner noted during a recent trip to the Jimmy film set, adding that “hundreds of extras” were needed “for a dance scene in a studio made to look like a Second World War hangar.”
Jimmy stars KJ Apa in the title role as well as Jason Alexander (Seinfeld) and movie/TV veteran Neil McDonough (Captain America: The First Avenger, Tulsa King), a Dorchester, Massachusetts native whose parents came to the U.S. from Tipperary and Galway.
The Three Sisters
Two of Ireland’s greatest actresses are teaming up for one strange upcoming movie.
Academy Award winners Jessie Buckley and Saoirse Ronan are among the A-listers slated to star in The Three Incestuous Sisters, which is based on a graphic novel of the same name by Audrey Niffenegger.
Dakota Johnson, Josh O’Connor, and even Mick Jagger will also appear in this movie, which will require some additional screenwriting work because, as many critics have noted, Niffenegger’s “novel” is essentially a picture book for adults, which takes only minutes to complete.
The plot is highly eventful, however.
The three close-knit sisters live in an isolated home until a romance and pregnancy turn their lives upside down. The sisters bicker, then yell. Kidnappings and violence ensue. A circus rolls through their town.
Rumors are flying around the internet that this film – to be directed by Alice Rohrwacher – may be shot as a mostly, or entirely, silent film.
Also keep an eye out for Saoirse Ronan as Paul McCartney’s wife, Linda, in the much-anticipated four-film Beatles project due for release in 2028.
Sharon Horgan’s “Youth”
Two generations of Irish talent are joining forces in the new HBO romantic comedy Youth. Created by and starring Sharon Horgan (Bad Sisters, Catastrophe), Youth also features Aran Murphy (Cillian’s son), alongside leading co-star Rupert Friend.
“As Horgan approached 50,” Vanity Fair recently noted, “she dreamed of writing a series about the specific chaos of middle-aged womanhood: dealing with troubled teenage kids, elderly parents succumbing to dementia, and the specter of waning sexual appeal.”
Horgan (the “queen of messy black comedies,” as Vanity Fair dubbed the writer/actress) added: “I wanted to look at all that through the lens of a divorced woman who feels that she has a very specific amount of time left to find happiness… [like] there’s a big alarm bell going off.”
Horgan plays a London-based literary agent with a teenage son named Ruari, played by Aran Murphy.
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