Highlights
- Jonathan Bailey and Bill Nighy will play real-life couple Bill Hayes and Oliver Sacks in Insomniac City.
- Dominic Cooke directs from a script he co-wrote with Hayes, adapting Hayes’s 2017 memoir about life with Sacks.
- Bailey also produces, while Altitude introduces the film to buyers at AFM and handles worldwide sales rights.
Jonathan Bailey is falling for Bill Nighy, and nobody is emotionally prepared.
The Bridgerton heartthrob and the Love Actually legend will play real-life partners Bill Hayes and Oliver Sacks in Insomniac City, Dominic Cooke‘s adaptation of Hayes’s 2017 memoir. Altitude is shopping the film to buyers at the American Film Market and handling worldwide sales.
Bailey plays Hayes, the writer and photographer. Nighy plays Sacks, the neurologist The New York Times once crowned medicine’s poet laureate.
Cooke, the director behind On Chesil Beach, is not underselling it. “Insomniac City is a rare story that feels both profoundly intimate and epic in scope,” he said.
He calls it “a story that celebrates second chances in life; a portrait of two people finding each other at an unexpected moment in their lives.” Translation: bring tissues. Possibly two boxes.
The story picks up as Hayes trades San Francisco for New York after a devastating loss. While rebuilding his life, he falls for both the city and Sacks.
The city is a co-star here. Cooke calls the film “a love letter to New York City itself, a place of endless possibility, reinvention and connection.”
The real romance started with fan mail. Sacks reached out in 2008 to tell Hayes how much he enjoyed his book The Anatomist.
The memoir is gooey in the best way. In one scene, Sacks, perched on the toilet while Hayes takes a bath, tells him, “I am glad to be on planet Earth with you.”
Cooke knows what he’s holding. “Bill Hayes’ memoir captures the fragile beauty of love in the face of mortality,” he said.
Hayes is not handing his love story to strangers. He co-wrote the script with Cooke, keeping the pen firmly in the family.
Brouhaha Entertainment’s Troy Lum and Andrew Mason produce alongside Mike Goodridge, Gabrielle Tana, and Bailey himself. Yes, Bailey is producing. The man is building his own lane.
Cooke says he is “honoured to bring that story to the screen alongside our extraordinary actors, Jonathan Bailey, Bill Nighy and our producing team.” Extraordinary is doing honest work in that sentence.
Variety put it bluntly: Bailey “has booked another lead role.” He does not rest.
He has already proven he can carry a queer romance. Fellow Travelers earned him a Critics’ Choice Television Award and an Emmy nomination, opposite Matt Bomer.
Nighy brings the other half of the equation. He is an Oscar nominee, a BAFTA winner, and the reigning patron saint of wistful British romance thanks to About Time.
There is one wrinkle. Bailey announced in September 2025 that he would step back from acting in 2026 to focus on The Shameless Fund, his LGBTQ+ charity.
So far, the announcements don’t say when cameras roll. Whether this counts as a sabbatical violation remains, for now, a mystery.
What is clear is the pairing. Two insomniacs falling in love in Manhattan, played by Bailey and Nighy, is the kind of casting that writes its own awards campaign.
