Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, writers of the last five James Bond movies, are to pen a new TV series based on ‘60s sci-fi character Barbarella.
Gaumont International Television and producer Martha De Laurentiis announced last year that they planned to bring the pop culture icon to the small screen, with Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn at the helm.
Canal+ has come on board as a production partner with Gaumont. Co-executive producers are Julien Forest and Jean-Marc Lofficier.
Purvis and Wade will now "reimagine" Barbarella, who was originally created by Jean-Claude Forest in a graphic novel and made famous in the 1968 film starring Jane Fonda.
The film starred Fonda as a 41st century astronaut who lands on an alien planet to hunt the evil Durand Durand. De Laurentiis' husband produced the 1968 movie and was working on a feature remake until his death in 2010, after acquiring the films rights in 2007.
Wade said : “Barbarella was always beguiling and transgressive and we are excited to reimagine her journey in the company of Mr Refn".
The writing duo’s first Bond screenplay was The World is Not Enough (1999) and they subsequently penned Die Another Day (2002), Casino Royale (2006), Quantum of Solace (2008) and Skyfall (2012).
Refn, who will direct and executive produce the series alongside De Laurentiis, said he was “excited” the two writers had signed on to develop and write the series with him. “I’m certain that the combination of our creative forces will produce a show that is as enthralling as it is sexy".
Source.
Check out this post for more info on Barbarella.
By the way, while I'm at it, here's a short but very intriguing teaser for Refn's upcoming film Only God Forgives, starring Ryan Gosling & Kristin Scott Thomas :
The film is expected to première in Cannes, where Refn won the Best Director Award for Drive in 2011.
This is a show I'd expect Cinemax to come up with, not Canal +.
ReplyDeleteWell, Canal+ does have two sex-related series on the air : Maison Close (taking place in a 1871 brothel) and Hard (a dramedy in the porn industry with a Nancy Botwin-type as the main character).
ReplyDeleteBut that's true, the potential cheesiness of the plot is through the roof. But when you have a filmmaker as talented as Refn on board, I'm sure it will go way beyond cheap softcore porn, and the writers are not that bad themselves — although one could argue that Purvis & Wade are not that good : among the past 5 James Bond films, the only one they've written all by themselves is the worst, Die Another Day.
They probably needed all that credibility and talent on a project like this or else they would have been laughed right out of the Canal+ offices.
ReplyDeletenot bad?
ReplyDelete