Though “Bones and All” may be getting rave reviews out of Venice, its filmmaker Luca Guadagnino has revealed he’s had to sadly abandon plans for one of his dream projects due to the expense.
Two years ago, the “Call Me by Your Name” and “Suspiria” helmer was planning a lavish ten-episode television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s famed novel “Brideshead Revisited” for HBO and The BBC.
At the time, an all-star cast was coming together for the project, including Cate Blanchett, Ralph Fiennes, Andrew Garfield and Rooney Mara.
Guadagnino and co-writer Benjamin Walters spent eighteen months working to get the scripts ready. However he explains to Deadline that project was shelved because of its cost:
“I had a great cast, and I needed the money, and the money I needed was $110 million, $11 million dollars an episode, and there was no way we could put it together. I said to myself: ‘I cannot compromise. It has to be done the way I want it to be done’.
I want to say to HBO and the BBC: ‘Guys, let’s do it, we still have the scripts and the rights’. It’s a very dear project. I love this novel. I wrote with Benjamin Walters, the script, so it’s something so close to me. If the miracle would happen I would jump and do it. It’s the question of a miracle right now, probably. I truly believe in miracles’.”
Guadagnino revealed the plan was for Garfield to play the older Charles Ryder, with a younger actor playing him at Oxford. “Industry” star Harry Lawtey was to play Sebastian Flyte, with Mara as his sister Lady Julia, and Blanchett and Fiennes as their parents Lord and Lady Marchmain.
He expanded the subtext to incorporate Waugh’s own young times at Oxford into the story, and the whole thing was “an allegory of the fall of the West, and the fall of the ruling class” along with the Catholic Church’s influence. The series would’ve spanned a time period from the 1920s through 1945.
The property has been famously adapted for the screen twice before – 1981’s ITV mini-series starring Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews, Diana Quick, Olivier and Claire Bloom; and 2008’s Julian Jarrold-helmed film starring Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw and Hayley Atwell, Emma Thompson and Michael Gambon.
