Sadly you are correct and the "listen again" feature does not seem to work outside the UK. :( (And I'm too lazy to wake up at 6:30 AM...) So I will look for the script itself. Sometimes these things also get posted on YouTube eventually.
Screenwriters, who often have political agendas to their pieces, love nothing more than to assign political motives for studios' reluctance to finance their projects, but this is pretty much never the case. Studios want and need above all to make money, and politically incorrect projects are often more profitable, not less. Also, criticizing Washington is and has been a favorite pastime of Americans (and Brits!), regardless of who happens to be in power at the moment, and certainly regimes have come and gone over the past 20 years. Your reasoning is much more likely to be correct; one colossally failed project can sink several similar ones after it. Studio executives typically pass on a project for one of the following reasons: they feel there is not enough general public interest in the topic to generate good business (there is a notorious perception that history pictures are often critcally acclaimed but rarely blockbusters); they feel that although the topic would generate wide interest the project would be so costly to produce as to limit profitability (as you pointed out CGI is now cutting costs dramatically); or they feel the script is just not very well executed, often because it makes for a good piece of literature, but not very good cinema. Recognizing these factors would probably be the first step toward getting a project like this made.
no subject
Screenwriters, who often have political agendas to their pieces, love nothing more than to assign political motives for studios' reluctance to finance their projects, but this is pretty much never the case. Studios want and need above all to make money, and politically incorrect projects are often more profitable, not less. Also, criticizing Washington is and has been a favorite pastime of Americans (and Brits!), regardless of who happens to be in power at the moment, and certainly regimes have come and gone over the past 20 years. Your reasoning is much more likely to be correct; one colossally failed project can sink several similar ones after it. Studio executives typically pass on a project for one of the following reasons: they feel there is not enough general public interest in the topic to generate good business (there is a notorious perception that history pictures are often critcally acclaimed but rarely blockbusters); they feel that although the topic would generate wide interest the project would be so costly to produce as to limit profitability (as you pointed out CGI is now cutting costs dramatically); or they feel the script is just not very well executed, often because it makes for a good piece of literature, but not very good cinema. Recognizing these factors would probably be the first step toward getting a project like this made.