That might be because Amazon is financing the film – which gives Leigh far more money than he usually has while secretively filming things like Happy Go Lucky or Mr. Turner. The film is about the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, “the infamous killing of an estimated 18 protesters, and the wounding of about 700 others in St Peter’s Field in Manchester on 16 August,” which “became known as Peterloo, in a bleak reference to the battle of Waterloo four years previously.”