Development

Development
"Not a great deal was written about His Majesty's speech therapist, Lionel Logue, certainly not in the official biographies. Nor was much published about the Royal stutter; it appeared to be a source of profound embarrassment."
— David Seidler[3]

David Seidler, the writer, had himself developed a stammer as a child, due, he believes, to the emotional trauma of the war, which had included the murder of his grandparents during the Holocaust. As a child, Seidler was inspired on finding out that King George VI had overcome a stutter. "Here was a stutterer who was a king and had to give radio speeches where everyone was listening to every syllable he uttered, and yet did so with passion and intensity," Seidler recalled. When Seidler became a writer as an adut, he resolved to write about King George VI. During the late seventies and eighties he voraciously researched the King, but found a dearth of information on Logue. Eventually, Seidler contacted Dr. Valentine Logue, who agreed to discuss his father and make his notebooks available, if the Queen Mother gave her permission. She asked him not to in her lifetime and Seidler abandoned the project.[4]
A middle aged man's face, reddish, curly gray hair. Large nose. Gray suit with notched lapels and a white open-necked shirt
The film's producers broke etiquette by hand-delivering Geoffrey Rush the script, but he liked it and eventually performed in and produced the film

In 2005, Seidler suffered from cancer, and returned to the story during a bout of creative work it inspired. His research, including a chance encounter with an uncle whom Logue treated, indicated he used mechanical breathing exercises combined with therapy probing the underlying causes of the condition. Thus prepared, Seidler imagined the sessions. He showed the finished screenplay to his wife. She liked it, but pronounced it too "seduced by cinematic technique" and suggested he re-write it as a stage play to focus on the essential relationship between the King and Logue. After he had completed it, he decided he quite liked it and sent it to a few people for feedback.[3]

In early 2006, one of the people Seidler sent his play to passed it to Joan Lane, of Wilde Thyme, a production company in London. Lane saw the script as a potential screen drama as well as stage play, and showed it to Simon Egan of Bedlam Productions, who recorded the first rehearsed read-through. Together Lane and Bedlam organised a reading of the play in Pleasance theatre, a small house in north London, to a group of Australian expatriates, among whom was Tom Hooper's mother, who called her son immediately and said, "I've found your next project".[5][6] With a view to mounting a stage production, Wild Thyme sent the script to Geoffrey Rush for his interest, simultaneously championing film director Tom Hooper for any future screen adaptation; and Bedlam Productions passed the script to Iain Canning at See-Saw Films, who saw its potential as a feature film.[7] Hooper liked the story, but thought that the original ending needed to be changed to reflect events more closely, "If you hear the real speech (made by the King on the outbreak of war in 1939), he’s clearly coping with his stammer. But it’s not a perfect performance. He’s managing it."[5]

The UK Film Council awarded the production £1 million in June 2009.[8] A script read-through was held on 11 November, ahead of the beginning of filming on 13 November. Principal photography, scheduled to last seven weeks, concluded on 17 January 2010.[9][10]
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