When The Doctor Met Gollum

The BBC have announced Einstein and Eddington, a film retelling the story of Einstein's discovery of relativity. The big brain himself is to be played by Andy Serkis while Dr. Who David Tennant has the other title role, Einstein's pen pal Eddington.

Other stars will include Jim Broadbent, Rebecca Hall and Jodhi May. I'd cast both Broadbent and Hall in We3, I think.

Here's a little something from the BBC Press Release:

This human story chronicles two men who, during the First World War, refused to accept narrow nationalistic boundaries and, against the odds, continued to strive for a greater truth.

Between them, they changed the world and proved one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century.

Opening in 1913, the then obscure German theorist Albert Einstein (Serkis) had spent years working on his General Theory of Relativity, a theory that threatened two centuries of Newtonian certainty and the foundations of British science.

British scientist Arthur Eddington (Tennant) was one of the most prominent astrophysicists and was Director of the Cambridge Observatory, a seat originally held by the father of British science, Sir Isaac Newton.

Eddington's wholehearted belief that "truth knows no boundaries" led him to start a correspondence with Einstein and to solely champion Einstein's theories at a time when the rest of the British scientific community and the public at large were rejecting anything German, due to their role in the war.

Eddington's expedition to Africa to photograph light bending round the sun during an eclipse lead to his proof that Einstein's theory is right, turning Einstein into a worldwide superstar in 1919. A star is born.

Einstein And Eddington is written by Peter Moffat (Hawking, Cambridge Spies), the producer is Mark Pybus and the director is Philip Martin (Hawking, Prime Suspect).

Moffat and Martin are reunited after working together on the award-winning Hawking, BBC Two's 2005 biopic of Stephen Hawking, who is considered the greatest mind in physics since Einstein.

Einstein And Eddington is currently filming on location in Cambridge, Croatia and Hungary and will transmit later this year on BBC Two.