The biggest soap event of the year is soon upon us, with Corriedale set to air on Monday. But as the worlds of Coronation Street and Emmerdale collide, ITV boss Iain MacLeod has revealed that a secret change was made.
The crossover episode is due to air on ITV1 tomorrow night for an unprecedented special event in the history of soaps. Though most of the storylines have been kept under wraps, we do know that a major multi-vehicle collision is at the centre of the action.
Speaking ahead of the episode, MacLeod shared that the final product didn’t deviate too much from the original idea for the crossover, though he did confirm that an alteration was made due to practical circumstances and budgetary restraints.
“The main difference [between the original idea and final product] was that it started off as a crash on the M62,” he began, with the producer recalling that he asked about the cost of shutting down the motorway for filming.
“The very level-headed production people had the job of going, ‘well, we can’t quite do that’, so the nature of the road changed. But the nature of the stories stayed very much as originally conceived.
“That’s because, as much as I conceived that individual episode, all the storylines that featured in it were things that have been generated by the very talented writing teams of Corrie and Emmerdale.
“So, I just took gold and wove it into something hopefully entertaining. It was robust and stayed the same, because we had really robust foundations in the stories that were leading up to it.”
While the location may have changed from the original vision, MacLeod was adamant that it wouldn’t affect the core power of the storyline, with the producer praising screenwriter Owen Lloyd-Fox for his script.
“He’s worked at length on both soaps and has written both of them impeccably,” said MacLeod of Lloyd-Fox. “I knew he would embrace the madness. Compared to some of the fantastically mad pitches Owen puts in the story conferences, this is relatively sane!
“Owen likes the big crazy stuff. I knew he’d write it with cleverness and wit. He’s very easy to work with. On something like this, you set off with a script at the start of the process, and it changes for all kinds of reasons.
“Some of which are down to my whims, some are down to practical concerns like the weather. What you need is somebody that can roll with the punches and redeliver something that’s every bit as good and sometimes better than what we had before.”
Despite the highly-anticipated nature of the crossover, ITV has maintained throughout that Corriedale is a one-off affair, though MacLeod did confirm that the storylines would continue in each respective soap.
