The King's Speech
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 The King's Speech facts

• Colin Firth plays King George VI who, to cope with a stammer, sees Lionel Logue, an Australian speech and language therapist played by Geoffrey Rush
• The men become friends as they work together, and after his brother abdicates the throne, the new king relies on Logue to help him make his first wartime radio broadcast on Britain's declaration of war on Germany in 1939
• Seidler read about George VI's life after overcoming a stuttering condition he endured during his youth
• He started writing about the relationship between the monarch and his therapist as early as the 1980s, but at the request of the King's widow, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, postponed work until her death in 2002
• He later rewrote his screenplay for the stage to focus on the essential relationship between the two protagonists
• Nine weeks before filming began, Logue's notebooks were discovered and quotations from them were incorporated into the script
• Principal photography took place in London and around Britain from November 2009 to January 2010
• The opening scenes were filmed at Elland Road, Leeds, and Odsal Stadium, Bradford, both locations standing in for the old Wembley Stadium
• For indoor scenes, Lancaster House substituted for Buckingham Palace, and Ely Cathedral stood in for Westminster Abbey, while the weaving mill scene was filmed at the Queen Street Mill in Burnley
• The cinematography differs from that of other historical dramas: hard light was used to give the story a greater resonance and wider than normal lenses were employed to recreate the King's feelings of constriction