SINGAPORE — In 2015, get ready for 1965.

The SG50 celebration film, which is executive producer Daniel Yun’s passion project, has been five years in the making and will begin pre-production this month with principal photography starting in November. It is set to premiere at the iconic Capitol Theatre next year.

MediaCorp artiste Qi Yu Wu and Malaysian actress Deanna Yusoff were also revealed as the first two leads in the film, playing Police Inspector Cheng and single mother Khatijah, respectively. Re:solve director Randy Ang will be co-helming a script by 10-year television writing veteran Andrew Ngin Chiang Meng — best known for his work on Growing Up and Fighting Spiders — along with Yun, who will be making his directorial debut.

Yun, who ran MediaCorp Raintree Pictures for more than a decade before leaving in 2009 to be an independent producer, addressed the many and varied conjectures on the premise of the long-gestating 1965.

“There has been a lot of speculation because this movie has been in development for so long,” said Yun. “So let me say what it’s not about. It’s not a biopic of Mr Lee Kuan Yew. It’s not a political film nor a propaganda film. It’s not a docu-drama. It’s not a movie about the independence of Singapore. So what is it really about? It’s about how fragile racial harmony can be and how we can take it for granted.”

Yun told TODAY that the film did begin as a biopic about Mr Lee, but that it evolved over the years. “And one year ago, when the Little India incident happened, it became very clear that what the script had evolved to, was something right.”

He shared that the main reason it took him so long to bring the project to life was that he was not comfortable with the script until a year ago.

“When we finally had a strong premise. When we finally found a relevance to the Singapore of today. When we have a story we feel can connect with a 65-year-old and a 25-year-old Singaporean. And also when we had a theme that can resonate not only with Singaporeans, but with anyone from any part of the world.”

Supported by the Media Development Authority Singapore under the Production Assistance Scheme, 1965 will be operating on a budget of 
S$2.8 million. It will be filmed mostly in Batam — at various locations around the island and at Infinite Studios’ soundstages there.

“The real challenge is to capture a moment in history and make a piece of Singapore history come alive. If we can, within minutes, transport our audiences back to the 1960s, then we have succeeded,” he said.

Yun also said he felt no restrictions making this film. “I’m not saying this for political correctness, but there was no self-censorship,” he said. “I wouldn’t allow it, for myself and for the rest of the team.”

As for the big question of whether Mr Lee will still be a character in the film, the answer is yes. “It starts and ends with him,” revealed Yun, who said he would only name the actor who would be playing Singapore’s first Prime Minister at a later date. “We will be revealing the rest of the 1965 cast progressively,” he added.

And what of casting two non-Singaporeans as leads — Qi is from China and Deanna is Malaysian — in a film about an important time in Singapore history?

“90 per cent of the cast will be Singaporean,” he assured. “The A-list local artistes that we want, we only just finalised the timing so we will reveal them in time to come.” Genevieve Loh