Jonathan Bailey and Bill Nighy will play writer-photographer Bill Hayes and neurologist Oliver Sacks in Insomniac City, a romantic drama directed by Dominic Cooke. The casting was announced Monday, on the eve of the American Film Market in Los Angeles, where Altitude will introduce the film to international buyers.
The project adapts Hayes's 2017 memoir of the same name. Hayes moves from San Francisco to New York after the death of his partner of 16 years. In the city, he rebuilds his life, falls for New York itself, and begins a six-year relationship with Sacks, who was nearly 30 years his senior and had been largely celibate for almost four decades. The two were together until Sacks's death.
Cooke and Hayes co-wrote the screenplay. "Insomniac City is a rare story that feels both profoundly intimate and epic in scope," Cooke said in a statement, describing New York as "a place of endless possibility, reinvention and connection."
The film is produced by Troy Lum and Andrew Mason of Brouhaha Entertainment, alongside Bailey, Mike Goodridge, and Gabrielle Tana. Executive producers are Altitude's Will Clarke, Andy Mayson, and Mike Runagall. Sacks, whose book Awakenings was adapted into the 1990 film starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, is one of the most storied figures in twentieth-century medicine.
No distributor or release date has been announced.