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Now available on DVD!

Starring James McAvoy, Alice Eve, and Rebecca Hall
Executive Producers Sam Mendes, Steven Shareshian, Nathalie Marciano, and Michelle Chydzik Sowa
Producers Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman, and Pippa Harris
Directed by Tom Vaughan
Screenplay by David Nicholls Based on his book
HBO Films Presents in association with BBC Films a Playtone Picture in Association with Neal Street Productions

From Playtone and producers Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Pippa Harris, Starter For 10 is a romantic comedy set in the mid-eighties about a working-class kid struggling to make his way in the rarified world of an upper-class British University. On his way to achieving his long-held ambition to appear on the British TV Quiz Show, University Challenge, he falls in love with his beautiful teammate and forms a plan to win her heart through his advanced general knowledge skills. Starter For 10 is a bittersweet comedy about loyalty, class, falling in love and the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

Synopsis

“Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to be clever,” Brian Jackson confesses in voice over at the start of STARTER FOR TEN. A working-class student from Essex navigating his first year at Bristol University, Brian (James McAvoy) has a lot to prove. While his hometown mates worry about him turning into a poncey wanker, Brian’s biggest concern is making the team for the long-running British television quiz show University Challenge. (The game show, which began in 1962 and is something like the UK’s answer to Jeopardy, pits four-member teams from posh universities against each other. “Starter” questions, worth ten points each, give the film its title.)

Amidst Tarts & Vicars dances, anti-Apartheid rallies, minging dorm rooms and puffs of marijuana smoke, Brian also finds himself romantically torn between two very different co-eds: ultra-fit blonde bombshell and University Challenge teammate Alice (Alice Eve), and thoughtful, politically-conscious Rebecca Epstein (Rebecca Hall in Christopher Nolan’s THE PRESTIGE).

With Margaret Thatcher’s economically depressed Blighty as a backdrop, and a killer, pitchperfect New Wave soundtrack—featuring music by The Cure, Wham!, Bananarama, Yaz, The Smiths, New Order, Tears For Fears, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Buzzcocks, and The Psychedelic Furs—in the foreground, STARTER FOR TEN is the great British teen 80s movie that never was...

It is also altogether delightful, with UK comedy sensation Catherine Tate co-starring as Brian’s steadfast mum, and McAvoy (THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE’S Mr. Tumnus the Faun) delivering the kind of charming, humorous performance that reinvigorates a genre. Though Brian Jackson knows everything, like all honest coming-of-age stories, STARTER FOR TEN is ultimately about its hero discovering the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

Directed by Tom Vaughan, based on the novel by David Nicholls, STARTER FOR TEN is produced by Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Pippa Harris and executive produced by Sam Mendes, Steven Shareshian, Nathalie Marciano and Michelle Chydzik Sowa.