The Lady in the Van "The Lady in the Van" was greenlit on 3 June 2014, with TriStar Productions and BBC Films working together to make the film adaptation of Alan Bennett's West End hit. TriStar won the film rights to handle worldwide distribution, while the BBC was the first to show the film on television in the UK. The involvement of Maggie Smith and Nicholas Hytner was announced simultaneously with the film, but they were attached to the project as early as 9 May (coincidentally Bennett's 80th birthday). Both of them had collaborated with Bennett in the past; Hytner on "The Madness of King
The Wicked Lady had taken over ownership of Gainsborough studios. In 1950 it was announced Arliss had written a sequel, "The Wicked Lady's Daughter" but it was never made. The Wicked Lady The Wicked Lady is a 1945 film directed by Leslie Arliss and starring Margaret Lockwood in the title role as a nobleman's wife who secretly becomes a highwayman for the excitement. The film has one of the top audiences ever for a film of its period, 18.4 million It was one of the Gainsborough melodramas, a sequence of very popular films made during the 1940s. The story was based on the