God is coming to the big screen in one of the cheapest films ever made in the history of British cinema, writes Catherine Milner.
Soup, which will premiere at the London Film Festival this autumn, has been made on a budget of £500,000 - one sixth of the cost of Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Well-known actors were, according to sources, persuaded to work for as little as £70 a day. The cast includes Alan Howard as God and Trevor Eve, who played the philandering MP in The Politician's Wife, as Lucifer.
In the film, God is presented as the beleaguered manager of a dingy annexe of a civil service building. He sets out to counter the forces of science that threaten to overwhelm him and calls on Nietzsche, Freud, Einstein and even the devil to help him in his battle.
The film was the brainchild of George Tiffin, a video producer and Anthony Taylor, who has made television commercials.
Sir Sidney Samuelson, chief executive of the British Film Commission, welcomed the initiative: "The main potential of films like these is to show those with rather more money what film-makers like this would be able to do with £5 million, rather than just half a million."
Sunday Telegraph
6.8.95