The Development of the Film

The King's Speech was directed by Tom Hooper and written by David Seidler.

David Seidler began reading about George VI after overcoming his own stammer during his youth. When Seidler became a writer as an adult, he resolved to write about King George VI. During the late 1970s and 1980s he voraciously researched the King, but found a dearth of information on Logue. Eventually, Seidler contacted Dr Valentine Logue, who agreed to discuss his father and make his notebooks available, if the Queen Mother gave her permission. She asked him not to do so in her lifetime and Seidler halted the project.

The Queen Mother died in 2002. Three years later, Seidler returned to the story and recommenced his research, which included a chance encounter with an uncle whom Logue treated, indicated he used mechanical breathing exercises combined with therapy probing the underlying causes of the condition. Thus prepared, Seidler imagined the sessions. He showed the finished screenplay to his wife. She liked it, but pronounced it too "seduced by cinematic technique" and suggested he re-write it as a stage play to focus on the essential relationship between the King and Logue.

In early 2006, one of the people to whom Seidler sent his play passed it to Joan Lane, of Wilde Thyme, a production company in London. Lane saw the script as a potential screen drama as well as stage play, and showed it to Simon Egan of Bedlam Productions, who recorded the first rehearsed read-through. Together Lane and Bedlam organised a reading of the play in Pleasance theatre, a small house in north London, to a group of Australian expatriates, among whom was Tom Hooper's mother, who called her son immediately and said, "I've found your next project". With a view to mounting a stage production, Wild Thyme sent the script to Geoffrey Rush for his interest, simultaneously championing film director Tom Hooper for any future screen adaptation; and Bedlam Productions passed the script to Iain Canning at See-Saw Films, who saw its potential as a feature film.

The UK Film Council awarded the production £1 million in June 2009, and filming commenced on 13th November. Principal photography, scheduled to last seven weeks, concluded on 17 January 2010. The film's total budget was under £10 million - compare this with the almost $100 million for Unstoppable, our next film!