and are set to portray real-life lovers Bill Hayes and Oliver Sacks in Dominic Cooke’s forthcoming film .

Based on Hayes’s moving memoir about their relationship, Bailey will play Hayes, opposite Nighy as Sacks, exploring their 28-year age gap.

What is about?

As he begins to rebuild his life, he unexpectedly falls in love with both the city and British neurologist and author Sacks.

Sacks was 75 and Hayes was 48 when their relationship began. They were together for approximately six years, until Sacks died from cancer in 2015.

The film’s description reads: “Set against the restless, vibrant backdrop of New York City, is an intimate and uplifting portrait of grief, hope, community and second chances, and of the remarkable possibility of finding love when it is least expected.”

Dominic Cooke co-writes with Bill Hayes

Cooke, whose directing credits include and , co-wrote the screenplay with Hayes.

His work also extends to the stage. He won the Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for Best Director for his production of at the National Theatre, as well as the Olivier Award for Best Director in 2007 for at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Speaking about the upcoming film, Cooke said: “ is a rare story that feels both profoundly intimate and epic in scope.

“It is also a love letter to New York City itself, a place of endless possibility, reinvention and connection.”

Hayes and Sacks relationship was also explored in Ric Burns’s 2019 documentary Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, which featured interviews with Sacks and those closest to him.

is yet to receive an official release date.