David Frankel, who has directed a host of popular dramatic comedies in recent years, including Marley & Me, The Devil Wears Prada and Hope Springs, had first been sent the script in late 2008 and had loved the story and its themes. “I had been a big YouTube fan of Paul Potts,” he explains. “Someone sent me the clip and I fell in love with him and had downloaded his recording of ‘Nessun Dorma’ and sent it to everyone I knew. I had always thought that a comedy set in the world of opera would be intriguing, because it’s this beautiful world that doesn’t get explored in the movies. And then here was this script that almost exactly combined these two ideas.”
Producer Mike Menchel cites Frankel’s interest as a pivotal moment in One Chance’s journey to the big screen. “It’s not every day that you get a filmmaker as talented as David involved in a smaller, offbeat project like this,” he notes. “He’s absolutely passionate about this material and this story.” Partnering with Harvey Weinstein was also instrumental, with the Oscar-winning producer bringing a similar level of passion to the Potts biopic. “He’s a game-changer,” says Menchel. “He saw what we saw in it and he said, ‘I’m making this by hook or by crook.’ That’s when the train pulled out of the station.”
Says Harvey Weinstein, "I am incredibly happy to be a part of this project. This was one of those screenplays I immediately fell in love with, and it’s exciting to see it brought to life with David Frankel and James Corden.”
While citing the Rocky references himself, Frankel also viewed ONE CHANCE as a Cinderella story about a downtrodden man with nothing but talent who magically finds a way to share it with the world…but not before encountering a string of funny/sad happenings to arrive at that place. The director brought a vision to the film that might not have been immediately apparent on the page, a
desire to widen the scope of a narrative that could easily be told on a smaller scale without losing the story’s intimacy or changing its fundamental nature as a portrait of a very ordinary man.
Frankel has always wanted to make a film that incorporated opera into its storyline. The American director has a personal connection: his father trained to sing opera when he was a teenager. “He has a beautiful tenor voice to this day and has always loved opera,” says Frankel. In his youth, his parents took him to see all the classics. “I had an education; I have a sense of the great composers but I couldn’t tell you the plot of Figaro,” he laughs. “I just learned the plot of Aida the other day while we were shooting a scene about it, and it’s so convoluted I can’t even remember it now. But going into this movie, I didn’t appreciate how much I would fall in love with the arias. The music is so beautiful and part of the great fun of making this movie is getting to share that.”
“I like that this story manages to be both sweet and funny in equal measure,” says Frankel. “Those are two adjectives that I’d love to see used to describe all my movies. It has elements of a fable and yet it happened in real life.”
“One Chance” is released and distributed by Captive Cinema.
Now showing in theatres nationwide.
