Peter Morgan Returns to Tony Blair for The Special Relationship

The Deal (2003) was a duel. The Queen (2006) was a chess match. And The Special Relationship – Peter Morgan's latest take on Tony Blair's career – looks likely to be a love-in.

The film will focus on Blair's close bond with Bill Clinton between 1997 and 2000: the years when their tenures at the top on both sides of the Atlantic coincided. Michael Sheen is due to return as the former prime minister for the third time, alongside Helen McCrory, reprising her Cherie Blair from The Queen.

Dennis Quaid is attached to play the ex-US president, reportedly beating Russell Crowe, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alec Baldwin and Tim Robbins to the role. Julianne Moore is lined up to play Hillary Clinton. Morgan intends to sidestep casting of Monica Lewinsky by showing the former intern solely in archive footage, including video of her closed-door testimony to Congress.

HBO is currently in talks with BBC Films to raise funding for The Special Relationship. If greenlit, the film will mark Morgan's directorial debut – Stephen Frears was the man behind the camera on both The Deal and The Queen.

While the Clintons' fight for the 1992 presidential primary was the inspiration for Primary Colors, The Special Relationship would mark the first time the big screen has directly addressed Bubba's years in power; George W Bush's stint in the White House has already been immortalized on celluloid, in Oliver Stone's W.

Morgan told the Daily Express that relations between Clinton and Blair appealed to him far more than anything involving Dubya.

"I couldn't write him with any dignity or elegance," he said. "I don't want to spend the time thinking about him.

"Everything that happened pre-9/11 is now Jurassic history and we've completely forgotten it and therefore to explore what happened 10 or 15 years ago is really, really interesting."