February Start Date For Mad To Be Normal Starring David Tennant



Gizmo Films have announced that shooting will begin on their upcoming feature, R.D. Laing biopic Mad To Be Normal, on 1st February 2016. David Tennant stars in the new UK project, which was previously titled Metanoia, as the maverick Scottish psychiatrist who championed the anti-psychiatry method of treating mental illness, supporting patients instead at a unique community in East London.

Also starring Elisabeth Moss, Michael Gambon, Gabriel Byrne and David Bamber, the film will shoot on location in London and the North of England.


Mad To Be Normal
Writer & Director: Robert Mullan

Mad to be Normal is the story of controversial Scottish psychiatrist, R.D. Laing and the infamous anti-psychiatry experiment he ran at Kingsley Hall - a medication-free sanctuary which made headlines around the world. During the 1960s and 1970s Laing was an international celebrity. In Santa Monica, 4,000 people turned out to see him perform a lecture, a week after Bob Dylan had pulled in the same number. A radio journalist confidently referred to him as the “white Martin Luther King.” His books topped student reading lists the world over, as his language excited and enthralled them: “a child born today stands a 10 times greater chance of being admitted to a mental hospital than to a university….perhaps it is our very way of educating them that is driving them mad… [and]…”so- called ‘normal men’ have in the last 50 years killed perhaps 100 million of their fellow normal men”. It was opinions like these which turned the psychiatric establishment against him.

David Tennant said of the project, “I have long been fascinated by the life and work of RD Laing. This is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate and discover this important man and I am honoured and thrilled to be involved in telling this story. Robert Mullan’s passion for the subject is inspiring and the presence of the brilliant Elisabeth Moss makes this something I cannot wait to start work on.”

Mad To Be Normal is a Gizmo Films production in partnership with Bad Penny Productions and GSP Studios. The film is expected to premiere later this year.





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