Hello, this is Simon Brew. I'm the editor of Film Stories magazine and a very warm welcome to a special episode of the Film Stories podcast.

Come with me. And I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

And movies. Movies that had stories.

That the story just sucks a man. This is just the beginning.

We would be honoured if you would join us.

Hello and a very warm welcome to Film Stories with Simon Brew.

I am Simon Brew as always.

That's absolutely everything you need to know about me.

The aim of the podcast though, well, title gives it away. I'm here to talk of the stories of film and I tend to talk about

development stories, production stories, marketing stories, release stories, all the ingredients really that

go to make the films that we know and sometimes love, just that the films that we know and sometimes

love. What you've happened upon here is one of my

occasional special episodes of the film stories podcast. I really love doing these. It's when I bring

along a filmmaker to talk about their latest release or a body of work. And in this case,

I'm delighted to be joined by Oscar nominee John Madden, the director of films such as Shakespeare in love, Mrs Brown, Miss Sloan,

Captain Corelli's Mandolin, the best exotic Marigold Hotel, and more recently, 2021's Operation

Mintsmeat, which is first and foremost what we're going to be talking about. So bits of necessary

scene setting to do here. Operation Mincemeat came out in 2021,

stars Colin Firth, Matthew McFadden, Kelly MacDonald, Penelope Wilton, Johnny Flynn and Jason Isaacs.

We mentioned the name Michelle Ashford a couple of times. Michelle Ashford is the screenwriter of Operation

Mincemeat, which in turn is based on the book by Ben McIntyre. The film played in cinemas early in the

UK in 2022 and proved to be a box office hit and it's now available on DVD, Blu-ray and

...