Keeley Hazell: Tunbridge Wells: Glamour model and Page 3 favourite Keeley Hazell has teamed up with talented former Tunbridge Wells schoolboys to star as a modern-day goddess in a short film that combines Classical mythology with tabloid celebrity.

Venus and the Sun has been written, developed and produced by a number of former local students now in their late 20s and is set to premiere at the town’s Assembly Hall Theatre this spring. The 20-minute film, which was made with a budget of just £25,000, also stars comedy actor Will Smith, from the BBC’s political satire The Thick of It, and Ukweli Roach, who played Jay in last year’s Streetdance 3D.  

For producer Andy Brunskill, 29, who went to Skinners’, it is his first solo effort after working as producer’s assistant on feature-length films including The Other Boleyn Girl, Tamara Drewe, Brick Lane and The Men Who Stare at Goats.

He explained how a chance meeting with Ms Hazell turned into the comic reworking of Ovid’s tale of Venus and Adonis, which is guaranteed an audience thanks to its star’s international army of avid fans.    

"I was at a film premiere party at the London Film Festival," he said. "I didn’t know who she was at the time, but I was with some mates who did and we went to talk to her.

"I gauged from her being there that she wanted to get into acting and it turned out that she did. So I pitched her something I made up on the spot and she said she’d be interested.

"So I pitched her something I made up on the spot and she said she’d be interested, so then I quickly called Reuben Grove and asked if he would write something.

"He came up with the actual concept and we worked it up, which took quite a few months. We sent it off to her management and she liked it.

"From that moment it became a real entity and it became possible to raise the money to go forward."

Writer and former Tunbridge Wells Boys’ Grammar student Mr Grove’s script sees Ms Hazell play a fictionalised version of herself with an unexpected passion for Latin. She finds sanctuary from fame and her adoring fans in the British Library where she meets librarian and Sun reader Adam.

The film, from the production company Jen X Films founded by Mr Brunskill’s school friend Matthew Mccooey, took two years to make and was filmed in London at the beginning of 2010.

Described as "a comic study of society’s obsession with image", it is in the final stages of post-production with the score (by Stephen Warbeck, who won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love) set to be recorded on Monday. The filmmakers are now looking for the best way to distribute the film online and it will also be released on DVD.

Mr Brunskill also appealed for local businesses to lend support and sponsorship to the project when it premieres at the Assembly Hall.