BARBARIAN PRINCESS/WILD AT HEART

Listen up, class. Are the girls more beautiful in Hawaii or Norfolk? Liverpool’s Shaun Evans, star of TV’s Teachers in 2002, should soon have the answer.

***********

The key for Evans is a film called Barbarian Princess which has started shooting on Hawaii before moving to Norfolk and features Evans, recently seen in Sparkle (main picture, with Stockard Channing), as the principal love interest of the said Barbarian Princess.

The film is a first feature for Nottingham director Marc Forby, who also has had something of an academic background, having started off as a producer for TV’s Teacher’s Pet and who recently packaged up new feature slasher Prom Night.

But for the moment both Brits will have their attention on the palm fronds and sunny seas of Hawaii, filming the true story of this Princess heir to the Hawaiian throne who visits Victorian England, falls in love, and has to choose between domestic bliss and saving her kingdom from American colonisation.

Alert students may be interested to note that it is a German, Q'orianka Kilcher, who starred in The New World as Pocahontas, who plays the Princess Ka'iulani.

Her island home will be Honolulu's Iolani Palace (above), which was the official residence of the Hawaiian Kingdom's last two monarchs--King Kalakaua, who built the Palace in 1882, and his sister and successor, Queen Lili`uokalani, and is now the only official state residence of royalty in the United States.

Barbarian Princess is the first film to ever shoot at this location and one could hardly imagine a more appropriate story to break the ice.

Lauri Apelian, producer with Matador Pictures says, "This is a powerful, epic story about the strength of a young woman who is forced to choose between the love for her country and the love of a man. It's steeped in American and Hawaiian history, and filled with passion and determination."

Filed March 11, 2008.