‘Downton’ star joins Jim Broadbent in emotional trailer for ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’
The first trailer for The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry has arrived!
Based on the best-selling 2012 book by British author Rachel Joyce, who also wrote the script, the movie boasts two of our favourite actors in leading roles.
Jim Broadbent (The Duke, Bridget Jones) stars as the titular Harold, alongside Penelope Wilton as his wife Maureen.
Wilton is best known for playing Isobel Crawley in Downton Abbey, and has also appeared in the likes of The Borrowers, Operation Mincemeat, and After Life.
Watch the trailer here:
The cast also includes Linda Bassett, best known as Nurse Phyllis Crane in Call the Midwife, and Joseph Mydell (Woman in Gold, Mrs Wilson).
When’s the release date?
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry will be released in cinemas across the UK and Ireland on Friday 28th April 2023.
It’s not yet been announced when the movie will arrive in the US and internationally.
Directed by BAFTA winner Hettie Macdonald (Howards End, Normal People), filming took place place entirely on the locations matching Harold’s walk in the story.
Production began in Devon in September 2021, before heading to Gloucestershire, the border between Wakefield and Dewsbury, and Sheffield, Yorkshire.
The movie follows the story of Harold, who leaves his seaside town in South Devon to deliver a message to an old friend.
The official synopsis continues: “Harold Fry was never meant to be a hero. He’s an unremarkable man who has failed at all the important things: being a husband, a father and a friend.
“Now, well into his 60s, he is content to fade quietly into the background of life. But when Harold learns his friend Queenie is dying, he is moved to act. He leaves home, walking to the post box to send her a letter, until he realises a letter is not enough.
“In that moment Harold decides to keep walking, all the way to her hospice, some 500 miles away in Berwick-upon-Tweed: as long as he walks, Queenie must live. Surprising himself as much as his wife Maureen, Harold embarks on a walk of hope, determined to travel the length of England to save his friend.”
The book was a finalist for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, becoming the best-selling hardback book in the UK from a new novelist that year.
Rachel Joyce’s novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is available on Amazon.