HBO To Broadcast Series Based On Elena Ferrante’s ‘My Brilliant Friend’
Image by Gabriel Bouys/Getty Images
By Talya Zax March 30, 2017
As the Forward reported earlier this month, Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, a quartet beginning with “My Brilliant Friend,” are heading to television in a 32-part series.
Now, HBO and the Italian state broadcaster Rai have announced that they’ll be shepherding the series to the screen. As previously announced, it will be directed by Saverio Costanzo, who will also serve as one of its screenwriters.
As Variety’s Nick Vivarelli reported, Costanzo has confirmed that Ferrante, who writes under a pseudonym and has kept her identity anonymous, is helping pen the series.
HBO has so far signed on to distribute the series’ first eight episodes.
The series, which follows the friendship of two Naples-born women through the middle and late twentieth century, felt like a good fit for HBO, the network’s programming president Casey Bloys told Variety.
“An exploration of the complicated intensity of female friendship, these ambitious stories will no doubt resonate with the HBO audience,” he said.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
