Turning history into hilarity
How Horrible Histories: The Movie creates cinematic farce from real-life antiquity
start with an expert
From the book to the TV show to, now, a movie, the starting point for Horrible Histories has always been the same. “The essential scripting process always begins with Greg Jenner, our historical expert,” says director Dominic Brigstocke. “He’s a walking encyclopedia. We start by asking Greg, “What’s funny about this period?’ So [for the Romans], Nero trying to drown his mother by building a collapsible boat for her is so absurd that you don’t really need to think of anything else.”
CREATE COMPELLING NEW CHARACTERS
The film features historical figures including Nero (Craig Roberts), Boudicca (Kate Nash), Agrippina (Kim Cattrall), and Claudius (Derek Jacobi, reprising the role 43 years after I, Claudius). But the two young leads — a Roman teenager named Atti (Sebastian Croft), and a Celt girl named Orla (Emilia Jones) — are invented. “It’s Atti and Orla’s story,” says Brigstocke. “It’s a narrative set against a huge, hopefully fascinating feast of genuine information. Apart from the fact we’ve made up Atti and Orla, everything else is real.”
GO BIG (WITH WHAT YOU HAVE)
The film climaxes with the famed Battle of Watling Street, in which Celtic queen Boudicca and the Iceni tribe take on the Romans. Staging an epic war is a step up from a CBBC sketch show, says Brigstocke, especially on a modest budget. “We did 100,000 Celts with 80 people in costume. And it’s a combination of using multiple angles, multiple cameras and computer effects to increase the number you see.” The battle was filmed across a week in Barton Hills, Bedfordshire, a few miles east of the ancient Watling Street route. “We’re a relatively low budget British movie, not a Disney epic,” says Brigstocke, “but hopefully, it should feel like it’s been created on a grand scale.”
HORRIBLE HISTORIES: THE MOVIE— ROTTEN ROMANS IS IN CINEMAS FROM 26 JULY