Alain Delon, French cinema icon, dies at 88
Alain Delon, the acclaimed French actor known for his roles in classic films like "Purple Noon" and "Le Samouraï," has passed away at the age of 88.
An English TV adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel The Leopard is in works.
The version comes 54 years after Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon and Burt Lancaster strutted down the Cannes red carpet for Luchino Visconti's film based on the novel, reported Variety.
Italian shingle Indiana Production has acquired rights to the book in collaboration with Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, its original publisher.
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They are developing an eight- to 10-episode series being shopped around in Cannes to potential European partners.
English-language writers are being roped in to work on the screenplay in collaboration with Italian scribes to guarantee the series' cultural authenticity.
“It will be a saga that retells the story of a country during its most profound changes, which involved the whole of Europe.
“As the novel so clearly says: 'Everything needs to change, so everything can stay the same.' I can't think of a more contemporary phrase to describe the times we currently live in,” said Fabrizio Donvito, founding partner at Indiana Production.
Published posthumously in 1958, The Leopard chronicles the changes in Sicilian life and society during the 19th century unification of Italy known as the Risorgimento. It became the top-selling novel in modern Italian literature of its day, translated into more than 40 different languages.
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