MUMBAI: Universal Pictures and Working Title Films announced that principal photography began 3 March on The Boat That Rocked, the new comedy about rock and roll, boys and a boat from filmmaker Richard Curtis (Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral). Inspired by the British pirate radio revolution in the ’60s, the majority of the film’s shoot will take place in a large rusty metal fishing trawler moored off the coast of England in the very waters that kept the rock of the ’60s booming into the U.K.

In 1966 — arguably British pop music’s finest era — the BBC played only two hours of rock and roll every week. But pirate radio blasted rock and pop from the high seas 24 hours a day. And 25 million people – more than half the population of Britain — listened to these pirates every single day.

The Boat That Rocked is an ensemble comedy where the romance takes place between the young people of the ’60s and pop music. It’s about a band of rogue DJs that captivated Britain, playing the music that defined a generation and standing up to a government that, incomprehensibly, preferred jazz.

The film has been written by Curtis and will be his second directorial outing, but first non-rom-com.

Leading the cast are Philip Seymour Hoffman (Charlie Wilson’s War, The Savages); Bill Nighy (Love Actually, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End) as; Rhys Ifans (Notting Hill, Elizabeth: The Golden Age); Nick Frost (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead); and Kenneth Branagh (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Hamlet). The film also stars Tom Sturridge, Jack Davenport, Ralph Brown, Chris O’Dowd and January Jones.