Author's Hollywood adaptation

Christopher Priest, the author of The Prestige will be in the town on Friday (September 14) to help promote the new season of films at the All Saints Centre.

The volunteer-run community film club will be showing the big-screen adaptation of his novel, which stars Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Scarlett Johansson and the author will be on hand to talk to the audience after the screening.

The movie is fast-paced period piece, set at the turn of the century, which tells the story of two competing stage magicians fighting to create the ultimate illusion.

Despite a significant pause before he answered the question, the Hastings-based novelist told the Express he was happy with the on-screen version of his novel which won the World Fantasy Award in 1996.

He said: 'I like it and it's quite a good film. I had nothing to do with the making of the film, I wrote the original novel and they adapted it without any real consultation from me.

'But the bottom line is they made a good film from it and it proved to be very popular in the US.'

The start of the novel is based in Hastings which is something the film-maker Christopher Nolan, director of the acclaimed Memento, chose to ignore, and according to the novelist Christian Bale was the only member of the cast to read the novel and attempt a Hastings accent!

He is currently hard at work on a screenplay for French film which chronicles the little-known subject of Victor Hugo's exile in Guernsey.

The Prestige starts at 7.45-8pm on September 14.