[Update: According to a report by Screen Daily, Paramount Television and Anonymous Content will be producing the show for Apple, who has secured the rights to develop the best-selling novel into a series.]
With the never-ending roster of tv-series and films to binge watch on Amazon, Netflix, Youtube and countless other web portals for millennials the television is the last resort (or when the WiFi dies on you) for video entertainment. However bibliophiles and cine-buffs might just find themselves hooked on to the old telly very soon.
According to this article by the Hollywood Reporter, Paramount Television and Anonymous Content have just bagged the rights to adapt Gregory David Roberts’s best-selling novel Shantaram (2003) into an American television series. They have also struck a deal for Roberts’s follow-up novel, The Mountain Shadow.
Set in the 1970s, Shantaram follows the story of Lin, a writer turned convict who escapes an Australian prison and flees to Bombay. Having changed his name to Shantaram, Lin learns Marathi and reinvents himself as doctor who looks after the residents of the slum where he lives. This gripping narrative told with reckless gusto and obvious affection and with many references to the author’s life too, was published in 39 languages and sold more than six million copies worldwide. The book will now be seen on screen for the first time, though in 2013 it was set to be adapted as a feature film by Johnny Depp, featuring Mira Nair as the director, Joel Edgerton in the lead, and Roberts writing the screenplay. Though the production was not completed.
However Roberts can now finally see his film come alive visually and according to this report by the Deadline he said that television was the “perfect medium” for his 936-page novel. We definitely can’t wait to binge watch this one!
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