“Karate Kids: Legends” director and “The End of the F—ing World” creator Jonathan Entwistle has been hired to helm a modern reimagining of Agatha Christie’s novel “Endless Night” in the works at StudioCanal.
Often cited as the famed author’s darkest work, and one of the most critically acclaimed of her career, the slow-burning psychological thriller novel follows a young drifter who believes he’s finally found a future he can settle down in when he meets and marries a sheltered yet volatile heiress.
The two purchase a tract of land called Gipsy’s Acre to build their dream home, despite eerie warnings from locals and a history of misfortune surrounding the area. As they settle in, strange incidents and growing tensions create an atmosphere of mounting dread as sinister forces threaten to unravel what they’ve built.
Journalist turned author/screenwriter Emily Siegel adapted the script for this take with Andrew Rona & Alex Heineman producing. Ron Halpern and Shana Eddy-Grouf will executive produce.
The property was previously adapted to screen in 1972 by filmmaker Sydney Gilliat and starred Hayley Mills, Hywel Bennett, Britt Ekland and George Sanders. Though a reasonably faithful take, it received mixed reviews with Christie herself panning the release, saying she was “very disappointed” and describing it as getting “flatter and less interesting every minute”.
The project marks the latest Christie adaptation following several other high-profile recent ones, including Kenneth Branagh’s “A Haunting in Venice” and the BBC One mini-series “Towards Zero”.
Coming next month is the three-part adaptation of “The Seven Dials Mystery,” along with new adaptations of “And Then There Were None,” “Witness for the Prosecution,” and “Partners in Crime”.
Source: Deadline
