10 unlikely badboy biopics

10 biopics they'll never make

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  ‘Condemnation’

  Director: Martin Scorsese

  Subject: Nick Clegg

  Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio as Nick Clegg, Hugh Grant as David Cameron, Brendan Gleeson as Charles Kennedy.
  
  Plot: The return of God’s Lonely Man, as misunderstood man-of-the-people Nick makes a satanic pact with a band of boffo Bullingdon bullies, consigns his own political party to the dustbin of history and ends up trudging the streets of Sheffield, a despised loner with only his memories for company.
  
  Sympathy ploy: A scene where Nick is haunted by the ghosts of bygone liberal icons including WE Gladstone (Clint Eastwood), Ming ‘The Merciless’ Campbell (Max von Sydow) and one of the Cheeky Girls, and wakes up screaming ‘I had no choice!’.
  
  Tag line: ‘He thought he could change the system… but the system changed him.’
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  ‘River Cottage: Endgame’

  Director: Michael Winterbottom

  Subject: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

  Cast: Kenneth Branagh as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Toby Kebbell as Head Chef Tim Maddens, John Hurt as forager John Wright, Ken Jeong as Jamie Oliver.
  
  Plot: It’s a glorious day at River Cottage HQ until Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is interrupted from tending to his mung bean harvest by a phone call: His demonic cockney rival and amateur rock drummer, Jamie Oliver, has sent out his minions to tamper with Hugh’s carefully selected organic, free-range, local produce. If Hugh doesn’t give Jamie the recipe for his delicious organic bran muffins, then Jamie will continue to replace his high-end ingredients with sub-par high-street basics.
  
  Sympathy ploy: A lengthy scene which riffs on the famous prison wall punching scene in ‘Raging Bull’ where Hugh breaks down in his smoke house and takes out his rage on a side of organic venison.
  
  Tag line: ‘Don’t panic! It’s organic.’
• 

  ‘Bastard Squad’

  Director: Michael Winner

  Subject: Daily Mail columnists

  Cast: Rebecca Hall as Jan Moir, Robert De Niro as Richard Littlejohn, Jason Statham as Toby Jones, Lindsey Lohan as Melanie Phillips.
  
  Plot: Michael Winner’s South London riff on ‘Pink Flamingos’ sees three of the Daily Mail’s top columnists go out for a port and lemon after a hard week’s work and dive straight into one of their weekly rants about how this glorious country is going to the dogs. So, they set-up a contest: who can write the most incendiary opinion column over the next thirty days? Disgust is monitored from a bunker set up in the basement of Chequers and it’s all gauged by how up-in-arms they can get those sun-dried nancy boys over at the Guardian.  
  
  Sympathy ploy: While our heroes are getting fat off inflated salaries and kick-back, the print journalism industry is slowly collapsing around them and by the end of the film, their shit-stirring antics have bankrupted the Mail group with legal fees. The film's final shot is of the four protagonists looking quizzically at an iPad.
  
  Tag line: ‘All You Need Is Hate.’
• 

  'Devil in Blue Jeans’

  Director: Tony Scott

  Subject: Jeremy Clarkson

  Cast: Shia LaBeouf as Jez, James Franco as James May, Frankie Muniz as Richard ‘The Hamster’ Hammond.
  
  Plot: We go back to where it all began, as three upstart petrolheads come together for the ride of their lives! A tale of fast cars, loose women, big mouths, tight trousers, whingeing lefties and funny Johnny Foreigners falling over, the film follows Clarko and the gang as they tear around the Home Counties, challenging the PC police with their happy-go-lucky insouciance.
  
  Sympathy ploy: Jeremy reacts to the Hammond crash by bashing his head against a wall and screaming ‘WHY?!’ until his trousers pop.
  
  Tag line: 'Speed is a state of mind.'
• 

  ‘The Eminent Historian’

  Director: Tom Hooper

  Subject: David Starkey

  Cast: Ben Kingsley as Starkey, James Corden as Henry VIII.
  
  Plot: Kitchen sink drama meets knockabout comedy, as a mucky-faced Bolton lad drags himself up from t’muck to become one of the nation’s leading Tudor historians, only to find it all swept away by a single misplaced comment. In his dark night of the soul, our Dave turns to his historical hero Henry VIII for spiritual direction – but it turns out a murderous, power-crazed 16th century king isn’t the best guide when it comes to dealing with the liberal elite.
  
  Sympathy ploy: In a scene of almost unbearable tension and brutality, Starkey has to sit next to some young ruffians listening to noisy rap music on a bus.
  
  Tag line: ‘Life’s a riot.’
• 

  ‘Rise of the Planet of the Japes’

  Director: Spike Lee

  Subject: Michael Richards

  Cast: Gary Busey as Michael Richards, Whoopi Goldberg as ‘The Ghost of Rosa Parks’, Jason Statham as Larry David.
  
  Plot: Having already honed his ‘hipster doofus’ chops by starring in 1978’s ‘The Buddy Holly Story’, Busey slips into the bowling shirt and gabardine slacks of the shamed ‘Seinfeld’ funnyman for a confounding ‘Borat’ knock-off that follows The Artist Formerly Known As Kramer through a series of toe-curlingly uncomfortable comic confrontations across the Southern states. Culminates with Busey taking to the pulpit of a church in South Carolina and leading a reserved Baptist congregation through an idiosyncratic, overly energetic and badly misjudged version of 'Johnny B. Goode'.
  
  Sympathy ploy: A make-or-break all-African-American musical version of ‘Seinfeld’ performed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
  
  Tag line: ‘O Kramer, Where Art Thou?’
• 

  ‘Hello, I Must Be Going!’

  Director: Bruce Robinson

  Subject: Phil Collins

  Cast: Rory Kinnear as Phil Collins, Mark Gatiss as Mike Rutherford, Hugh Laurie as Tony Banks, Alex Zane as Alex Zane’s sister.
  
  Plot: After seeing his massive fortune wiped out by a Swiss banking meltdown/pyramid scheme the former Genesis front/sticksman has only one option – to get the band back together! Arriving back in Dover with only an ill-fitting leather biker jacket, a clapped-out white Transit van and Mike Rutherford’s mobile number (circa 1998), Phil has to renegotiate a much-altered musical landscape on his way to the ultimate prize of a spot in the Battle of the Bands competition at Camden’s Dublin Castle compered by Alex Zane’s sister.
  
  Sympathy ploy: As Phil picks over a ‘Curry Night’ Rogan Josh in the Hastings Wetherspoon’s, Jam Tronik’s electro version of his aria to homelessness ‘Another Day In Paradise’ wafts across the pub...
  
  Tag line: ‘Take a look at him now!’
• 

  ‘Citizen Boll’

  Director: Uwe Boll

  Subject: Uwe Boll

  Cast: Uwe Boll as himself, Megan Fox as Mrs Boll, Jonah Hill as Harry Knowles, Arnold Schwarzenegger as God.
  
  Plot: The Greatest Director in the History of the World is beseiged by an unholy alliance of fanboys, culture vultures and soul-sucking art-vampires, until God intervenes and kills them all, at which point our hero wins all the Oscars and is elected President of Films.
  
  Sympathy ploy: Uwe Boll doesn’t require your sympathy, he’s already awesome.
  
  Tag line: ‘Resistance is futile. Attendance is mandatory.’
• 

  ‘Cat in a Hot Tin Bin’

  Director: Oliver Stone

  Subject: Cat Bin Lady

  Cast: Judi Dench as Mary Bale (AKA Cat Bin Lady), Rik Mayall as God.
  
  Plot: Having offered a cinematic soapbox for such controversial figureheads as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, Oliver Stone seeks to find ‘The Real Cat Bin Lady’. Heading back to her bizarre formative years, we see how she was locked in the big cat enclosure at London Zoo by her bullying history teacher, how her elderly uncle had his leg eaten off by a hoard of mutant Albanian tom cats, and the day a hopped-up boyfriend coerced her into ram raiding a pet shop in Huddersfield. Stone catalogues the events leading up to that fateful day, asking with his cryptic final shot, why would she NOT throw that cat in the bin?
  
  Sympathy ploy: Tests have shown that with Judi Dench in the lead role, chances of audiences leaving the cinema with anything less than warm-to-tepid cockles are negligible.
  
  Tag line: ‘Taking out the trash.’
• 

  ‘Joey Barton in The Lost Thimble’

  Director: Ron Howard

  Subject: Joey Barton

  Cast: Colin Farrell as Joey Barton, Noel Clarke as Anton Ferdinand, Eric Cantona as himself.
  
  Plot: After QPR gain surprise qualification to the Europa League via the back door of the Fair Play Rankings, football’s premier man of letters utilises his uncanny mastery of Wikiquotes to research and locate the mythical Thimble of Christ – a lost relic previously sought by Sir Eric of Cantona. And so, he ambles across an eye-catchingly dull panoply of minor Mitteleuropean steel towns, all the while terrorising opposition midfields with industrial tackles and Twitter-friendly passages from ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’.
  
  Sympathy ploy: Joey kneels before the statue of Eusebio outside Benfica’s Stadium of Light bellowing ‘I done so many bad things!’, Bad Lieutenant-style, into an impassive Lisbon sky.
  
  Tag line: ‘What would Joey do..?’