10 surprising facts about ‘Six Minutes to Midnight’
World War II spy thriller Six Minutes to Midnight is now available to own!
The thrilling tale of espionage tells the story of a British finishing school for the Nazi high-command.
Watch the trailer:
The movie stars Eddie Izzard (Valkyrie), Carla Juri (Blade Runner 2049), and James D’Arcy (Dunkirk), alongside Oscar winners Judi Dench (Skyfall) and Jim Broadbent (The Iron Lady).
Six Minutes to Midnight is released by Lionsgate UK on Digital Download in the UK today, and you can buy it on DVD from next Monday.
To celebrate the home entertainment release of Six Minutes to Midnight, here are ten interesting bits of trivia about the movie:
1. The movie’s story is based on the real-life Augusta Victoria College in Bexhill-on-Sea, an East Sussex seaside town near Hastings.
2. Eddie Izzard and Dame Judi Dench previously starred together in Sally Potter’s 2009 mystery art film Rage, and 2017’s Queen Victoria drama Victoria & Abdul.
3. While they’d probably rather forget it, Jim Broadbent and Eddie Izzard also both appeared in the movie adaptation of classic British spy series The Avengers, widely derided as one of the worst films of all time upon its release in 1997!
4. The movie began filming way back in July 2018, but had its release pushed back by almost a year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
5. Director Andy Goddard’s prior credits include directing episodes of Downton Abbey, Carnival Row, Doctor Who, and Law & Order: UK.
6. In Spain the film was released with the title Las Hijas del Reich, meaning “The Daughters of the Reich.”
7. While Six Minutes to Midnight is set in Bexhill On Sea on England’s south coast, the pier in the film is actually some 215 miles away in Penarth in South Glamorgan – on the south coast of Wales!
8. If you look very carefully, you can see people paddling on surfboards in the distance during the scene of a coastal excursion in the bus!
9. The movie’s title is in fact not a reference to the famous Doomsday Clock, the symbol representing the likelihood of an imminent man-made global catastrophe, which wasn’t introduced until 1947, eight years after movie is set. Instead it refers to a phone number in the film, Whitehall 1154 (11:54pm).
10. Eddie Izzard co-wrote the script with actor Celyn Jones, who you may recognise from Endeavour, Inspector George Gently, and last year’s Mr Jones.
The official synopsis reads: “Summer 1939. Britain is on the eve of war and yet peace remains in the picturesque seaside town of Bexhill-on-Sea where influential families in Nazi Germany have sent their daughters to a prestigious finishing school to learn the language and be ambassadors for a future looking National Socialist party.
“When new teacher, and undercover agent of the British Secret Service, Thomas Miller (Eddie Izzard) joins the school he discovers a plot to remove the girls from the country before the outbreak of war. With the innocent young women now being used as expendable political pawns by the Nazi elite, Miller attempts to raise the alarm.
“But when his superior officer and the only man aware of his true identity is murdered before his eyes, the British authorities believe Miller himself to be the culprit. Now the chase is on, will the secret agent be captured before he has a chance to reveal the truth and save the girls?”
Six Minutes to Midnight is available to pre-order now on Amazon.