Only four years after the release of an Oscar Winning Musical Version, the BBC have today announced that they will be working alongside Hollywood Producer Harvey Weinstein to adapt a six part, non-musical drama series based on Victor Hugo’s classic novel Les Miserables.
Les Miserables, originally released in 1862, focuses on the story of the criminal Jean Valjean on his path to redemption, and the well known Musical adaptation is home to such well known numbers like I Dreamed a Dream and On My Own, but those much beloved musical numbers will be dropped by the BBC, who have instead chosen to focus on the intense, gritty drama that surrounds the story.
Speaking of the new approach, similar to the one taken by the BBC in their recent 6 part of adaptation of the Leo Tolstoy classic War and Peace, Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein described Les Miserables as “one of the greatest novels of all time”, and highlighted his hopes to create “An Intense and serious drama that will find contemporary relevance to what’s going on in the world today”, noting it would be “completely different” from the popular musical version, which does somewhat skip over some elements of the story.
After receiving critical acclaim for its adaptation of War and Peace, a book which likely proves daunting to most script writers and movie producers, the BBC will be assembling the same team behind it to tackle Les Miserables. If they prove successful a second time, then it is likely the team will reunite for another big budget, six part drama series based on a Classic Novel, and if they do they certainly won’t be short on choices.
“I think the BBC and Weinstein Television collaboration are a new paradigm in the telling of classics – they’re modern and yet respectful” said Harvey Weinstein in his statement, perhaps signalling that this will be only the second part in an unrelated anthology of adapted classics?
Les Miserables is not scheduled for release on the BBC until 2018, but at least we’ve got the 2012 Musical version to keep us company until then!
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