Breakfast on Pluto is set during the 1970s in a politically turbulent London and centers around the misadventures of Patrick "Pussy" Braden (Cillian Murphy), an engaging, clever and droll young transvestite prostitute who is looking for love and a simple place to call home. Pussy's strange life begins when he is born in the border city of Tyreelin, Ireland in the mid-'50s. His birth is the result of a rendezvous between the village priest and his beautiful young housekeeper.
Pussy is abandoned by his mother and is unable to get in touch with his father, so he is raised by a chain-smoking, beer-guzzling woman named Whiskers. However, when Pussy begins to show a penchant for wearing women's clothing and does impersonations of females, Whiskers kicks him out.
Over time, our hero finds happiness and safety with a British politician who acts as his sugar daddy, but that contentment is short-lived. The politician is killed by the IRA and Pussy is alone again. He goes on a search for his birth mother and winds up hustling joes at Piccadilly Circus.
Though Pussy has no real political beliefs, it's not long before he is drawn into the chaos and terror that surround him. He sees both friends and lovers murdered and notes that bombings are rarely even shocking. While flirting with a soldier in a club, a bomb explodes and the soldier is killed. Pussy is wrongfully accused of planting the bomb and arrested, and his grip on reality begins to slip steadily away. Undaunted, his search for love and family continue.
Along with 28 Days Later's Murphy, Liam Neeson will star as Pussy's father. Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Interview With the Vampire) will both direct and adapt the screenplay from Patrick McCabe's novel. (Kim Hollis/BOP)