The Boat That Rocked

Richard Curtis' The Boat That Rocked opened in the UK in April 2009 as a major Working Title commercial release and underperformed domestically — the original UK cut ran 135 minutes; Curtis re-cut and shortened the film for the U.S. market, where it was retitled Pirate Radio and released later in the year at 117 minutes. The two cuts differ in pacing and several supporting-character moments.

The cast is one of the largest Curtis ever assembled: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Nick Frost, Rhys Ifans, Tom Sturridge, Kenneth Branagh, Jack Davenport, Tom Brooke, Chris O'Dowd, Ralph Brown and Emma Thompson, with January Jones in a supporting role. Cinematography is by Danny Cohen and the soundtrack is one of the most commercially significant music compilations attached to a British film of its era — the Curtis-curated double album reached number one in the UK and went platinum in three weeks.

The story draws on Radio Caroline and the wider real history of the offshore pirate radio stations that broadcast to Britain from international waters during the 1960s, before the Marine, &c., Broadcasting (Offences) Act 1967 effectively shut them down. Curtis has been candid in interviews that the dates and ship names in the film are deliberately fictionalised composites. The film was nominated for the BAFTA for Best British Film in 2010 and remains the most commercially recognisable cinematic engagement with the pirate-radio era to date.