A lot of people had been trying to get the book to the big screen since 1975 when it was written, but Ben Wheatley, the director of High-Rise, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by J.G. Ballard, made it quite clear that this was a brand-new script at the press conference he gave in the Kursaal yesterday. He was amazed by how Ballard had predicted the future that is now our present: “The more outrageously he writes, the more it comes true.”

Tom Hiddlestone, who accompanied Wheatley along with fellow cast members Sienna Miller and Luke Evans and producer Jeremy Thomas, revealed that when it came to choosing a character, it was important for it to be someone complex so he jumped at the chance to appear in High-Rise. “As an actor I’ve always been drawn to challenges in unknown territory, as if I were a foreign correspondent.” Having been at the Festival in 2011 to present The Deep Blue Sea with Terence Davies, he also said how pleased he was to be back in a city that had always made him feel welcome.