Filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore is set to turn his Oscar-winning film “Cinema Paradiso” into a high-profile six-episode TV series that he will write and direct.
Marco Belardi’s recently launched Bamboo Production will produce the project and is said to be in advanced talks with an unspecified U.S. streaming service to come on board.
The original film won a Special Jury Prize at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival before going on to win the Oscar for best foreign language film in 1990. Set in a small Sicilian town in the wake of the Second World War, it follows an eight-year-old boy who embarks on a lifelong love affair with the movies.
The series version will be the same story as the film, but “in expanded form with various different narrative strands”, says Belardi, with the back stories of the main characters of the village being fleshed out.
Tornatore is currently writing the treatment and the pilot, with plans for the series to be shot imminently and ready for airing in 2023.
Source: Variety
