A NEW movie on the 1916 Easter Rising is expected to hit cinemas next year.
North of Ireland producer Kevin McCann said he plans to release the “first full-length motion picture” entitled The Rising during the historical uprising's centenary year.
McCann (The Boys of St Columb’s) hopes that production of the film will begin in autumn, provided that a lead investor can be secured.
It will star Colin Morgan (The Fall, Merlin) as Seán Mac Diarmada in the film.
McCann said: "We are making history - a signature Irish film. I've known it since the day I started researching in 2012. And now is the time, for an investor to join us and back this movie for next year's anniversary."
"No other movie will have such an open market and free publicity anywhere in the world. With 2016 on the horizon, the time to do it is late autumn.
"Other countries and cultures celebrate their heroes in cinema over and over again, and rightly so, and now, where is the Irish 'birth of nation' story?"
McCann added that along with Michael Collins and The Wind that Shakes the Barley, The Rising will mark "the completion of a great trilogy of Irish films".
"Back in 1916, the Easter Rising itself was funded by the Irish public and Diaspora and now a century later, the remembrance of that heroic event must be funded by their descendants.
"A movie 100 years in the making is upon us and the responsibility to tell the world our 'birth of nation' story lands on our shoulders today."
See More: Colin Morgan, Easter Rising 1916, Film, Film
