Showtime Producing Documentary on Charlie Chaplin

Altitude and Showtime are producing a documentary on iconic Hollywood star Charlie Chaplin. The companies announced on Monday that they’re teaming up to represent worldwide rights to the film, titled Chaplin, which comes from Peter Middleton and James Spinney. Altitude will handle international rights, with Showtime taking the North American rights.

Chaplin is being funded by the BFI, awarding funds from the National Lottery, Film4 and Showtime. Further support comes from the BFI National Archive’s world-class collections and Chaplin’s World by Grévin. Chaplin’s World, a museum in in Vevey, Switzerland where Chaplin lived for twenty-five years, will act as a shooting location for sequences set during the latter stages of his life.

The announcement describes the documentary as follows:

“Chaplin is both the ultimate rags-to-riches story and a revealing, poignant and definitive portrait of cinema’s most iconic figure. Groundbreaking, controversial, outspoken, visionary; for decades he was the most famous man in the world – but who was the real Charlie Chaplin?”

BAFTA-nominated filmmakers Middleton and Spinney have gained unprecedented access to Chaplin’s personal and creative archive, including a treasure trove of previously unknown material. Through unseen outtakes and newly unearthed audio recordings, Middleton and Spinney will chart Chaplin’s escape from an impoverished childhood in late-Victorian London to the bright lights of Hollywood at the dawn of cinema. But although his fictional alter ego the ‘Little Tramp’ brings him global fame and total artistic control, turbulent creative anxieties, successive personal scandals and a controversial political voice ultimately lead not only to the demise of his beloved character, but his rejection from America and self-imposed exile.”