Phoebe Dynevor is to lead Sky original movie The Colour Room alongside Matthew Goode, marking her first major role since headlining Netflix’s record-breaking Regency-era drama Bridgerton.
Dynevor will play Clarice Cliff, a pioneering ceramic artist who roared to prominence in the 1920s while working in Britain’s Stoke-on-Trent pottery industry. The Colour Room is produced by Caspian Films, Sky, and Creative England, while the feature is based on a BAFTA Rocliffe-winning script from Claire Peate. Ophelia helmer Claire McCarthy directs.
Additional cast includes David Morrissey (The Walking Dead), Darci Shaw (Judy), Kerry Fox (Rare Beasts), and Luke Norris (Poldark). The Colour Room will start production later this month in Stoke-on-Trent and Birmingham, while the film will be released in cinemas and on Sky Cinema later this year.
Here’s the logline: “The Colour Room follows the journey of a determined, working class woman, Clarice Cliff, as she breaks the glass ceiling and revolutionises the workplace in the 20th century. Clarice Cliff (Dynevor) is a vivacious young factory worker in the industrial British midlands of the 1920s… Bursting at the seams with ideas for colours and shapes, Clarice takes more and more dangerous risks – but she manages to stay one step ahead of the workhouse and impress the eccentric factory owner Colley Shorter (Goode) on the way with her talent and innovation.
“Apprenticed to renowned Art Designer Fred Ridgeway (Morrissey) and with support from Colley and other women in the factory, Clarice fights her way through to design the unprecedented Art Deco ‘Bizarre’ range. In the middle of the Great Depression, she ensures the factory’s survival and her future as one of the greatest Art Deco designers and a household name.”
The Colour Room is produced by Thembisa Cochrane (The Harvesters) and Georgie Paget (Queens Of Syria) for Caspian Films, in association with Denaire Motion Picture Poetry and co-producer Neil Jones (Farming). The film is executive produced by Laura Grange for Sky, Paul Ashton for Creative England’s West Midlands Production Fund, and David Gilbery, Charlie Dorfman, Marlon Vogelgesang for Media Finance Capital in association with On Sight.
Peate said: “The story was inspired by a single image; a young factory worker leaving her grim, industrial reality behind her and stepping into the rainbow of the Colour Room – a world of joy and possibility. It was thanks to the script winning at BAFTA Rocliffe and being performed on stage that it was picked up.”