Latest news with #NarrowRoad
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North' Producers On Bringing Richard Flanagan's Epic Book to the Screen: 'A Really Important Australian Story'
The television adaptation of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan's epic Booker Prize-winning war novel, debuted on Amazon Prime Video on April 18. As befits the cultural importance of the book to Australians, the series stars arguably the country's buzziest male actor Jacob Elordi and is also helmed by one of its most important filmmakers Justin Kurzel. But Narrow Road's decade-long journey to the screen has been a long and arduous one. Published in 2013, Flanagan's WWII-set book follows Dorrigo Evans, an Australian surgeon haunted by a wartime love affair and his brutal experiences as a POW forced to build the Thai-Burma Death Railway under Imperial Japanese command. The novel shifts between Dorrigo's youth, including a summer affair with his uncle's young wife, the horrors of his captivity, and his later, unfulfilled life, exploring memory, trauma, and the fragility of human dignity. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'The Gardener' Producer José Manuel Lorenzo to Receive Conecta Fiction & Entertainment Honor Netflix Sets Four New Series Made in Mexico, Including 'Santita' With Gael Garcia Bernal 'How to Have Sex' Director Molly Manning Walker Heads Up Cannes Un Certain Regard Jury Flanagan was inspired to write Narrow Road by his father's experience as a prisoner of war who was forced to work the Burma Death Railway. The book received worldwide acclaim, selling more than a million copies in over 42 countries, won both the 2014 Man Booker Prize and Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction, and cemented Flanagan's reputation as arguably Australia's greatest living author. Given the praise and international success of Narrow Road, it was inevitable there would be keen interest in adapting the book for the screen. In 2018, it was revealed that FremantleMedia Australia had secured the rights to the book with the intention of creating a miniseries. A year later, Justin Kurzel, the Aussie auteur behind Snowtown, True History of the Kelly Gang and Nitram, and his writing partner Shaun Grant were announced to be boarding the project to create their first work for television. And then nothing. The project was stuck in limbo due to leadership changes at Fremantle and also the production shut downs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. After the rights lapsed, Flanagan approached Jo Porter, a former exec at Fremantle, who had established a new production company, Curio Pictures. With Kurzel and Grant still attached, the long delay was also fortuitous as it meant that Elordi, basking in the success of his turns in Euphoria, Priscilla and Saltburn, had come of age and was ideally suited to take on the role of Dorrigo Evans. As well as being Kurzel's first TV project, the series had added significance as Elordi was coming home to star in his first major Australian production. Over a decade after the book was published, the first two episodes of the five-part miniseries of Narrow Road premiered at this year's Berlin Film Festival, to gushing praise from critics. The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Curio's Porter and Rachel Gardner and Amazon MGM Studios' head of Australian originals Sarah Christie about the long journey to the screen for Flanagan's book and its importance to modern notions of Australian identity, brining Elordi home and working with the actor who is at an 'inflection point' in his career and the heightened interest in Kurzel's first television project. Jo, I know originally adaptation was a Fremantle show, and you were at Fremantle previously. Did you take the show with you when you created Curio? JO PORTER Rachel and I when we both left our respective places of employment to join up forces and start Curio Pictures, which is a Sony production entity here. We often lamented the golden handcuffs of those projects that you put your heart and soul in that you have to leave behind and for me, the one that was really, really hard to leave behind was Narrow Road, but the opportunity for the new venture was there, so you have to move on. We started Curio up in the middle of 2021 and then towards the end of that year, I got a call literally out of the blue from Richard Flanagan saying — because COVID happened and that slowed everything down — 'hey, the rights have lapsed, [he asked] would you consider taking it on.' Personally, it was like oh my god, that is just extremely exciting. Rachel and I were still developing our slate, it was our first project, so it was before [Disney+ series] Artful Dodger. RACHEL GARDNER Curio had just formed, and Jo rang me. I was at the end of my time at [See-Saw Films]. I'd done all my gardening leave, and I was like, '[Justin Kurzel] and [Shaun Grant] doing The Narrow Road to the Deep North. What!? Wow, like what does that look like?' Really intriguing. So Kurzel and Grant were still attached when the rights lapsed? PORTER Yes. After I'd left [Fremantle] they continued and there was a lot of prior relationships but also trust between [Richard Flanagan, Kurzel and Grant] in the project. GARDNER We were really excited to take that it on. It was really important for us to make a statement for Curio with a really important Australian story. It's the type of show we want to be known for making out of Australia with the best of the best of Australian talent and working with great partners to take Australian content to a broad audience and a global one as well, not just a local one for us. The international aspect is interesting to me, given the talent involved and the book it is adapted from, the miniseries seems to have a lot of awards potential… PORTER You make it for an audience, to be honest. As producers, that's where our ambition sits, but we do believe that it has strong elements. I think particularly taking a filmmaker like Justin into the television sphere, this is his first sojourn. Also things like the Berlinale and the incredible honor of having the gala screening there [at the Berlin Film Festival]. Like Rachel said, I was intrigued to see what a Justin Kurzel television piece could look like. [Going back to] Berlinale, we got an encouraging response out of that. But you never make something thinking it's going to be awards bait. What is thrilling is when all the pieces coalesce, the ambition of your commissioning partner comes together as well, and it is just alchemy, and then if it also has [awards] potential, well, isn't that sweet? Personally, I believe every single person that's worked on it deserves the most enormous award because of their contribution. Sarah, in the timeline for the series adaptation of , where does Amazon come in? When did you guys start looking at this, and this actually this works for us as well? SARAH CHRISTIE I think it was late 2022 when Jo, Rachel and I started talking about the different things that we could potentially do together, and Narrow Road was just one of those projects that is absolutely gold in terms of speaking in a deep way to an Australian audience and then also the the international potential. Richard's novel is absolutely exquisite and when they brought around the project it was a huge draw card for us. Sitting down and reading Shaun's script for the first time — we read a lot of scripts like every single day — and when one sort of shines through, you know quite quickly that it's something we just had to bring onto the slate. Justin, Shaun and Curio's vision: we were really interested in seeing how these brilliant filmmakers were taking a new step in their ambition in telling a story that was going to be incredibly grounded, authentic and real. But it also has these elements of like lightness that came through, in the hope, in the love story that really enables people, particularly the character of Dorrigo, to survive the most horrific experiences. So we were so excited about the vision that this story in terms of the tonal balance. And then having Jacob Elodi attached already at the point when we first started talking about this project, for us really just cemented the potential to reach a really broad audience. Jacob was at a really incredible inflection point in his career, having made his mark in Euphoria and Saltburn and then wanting to sort of come home [to Australia] to work with this incredible team of the best Australian filmmakers working today and take on a very challenging but incredible role. There's also the fans of the novel, which we already know exist, which is a big drawcard again. We're speaking already to a very active and passionate audience and then having someone like Jacob come on board really for us felt like we were going to broaden out and really speak to a younger audience as well. Jacob is an incredible actor, and his performances have really resonated a lot with younger audiences. This story is actually about what young young people went through, so we were just very excited about the potential to speak to a really broad Australian audience. PORTER [The role of Dorrigo] was such a hard role to cast. To find someone that could carry a piece like this, that could be someone that could unlock the finance for this project, authentically play the role and be a leader amongst many. [Those types of actors] don't just fall off trees, and it's almost like we had to wait until Jacob was the right age to play the part. He speaks so beautifully about his love of the novel, but also of work of Justin and it was always his dream to work with him and so it feels like serendipity. As Sarah said, he's at the inflection point of his career, he just committed to it. That would have been in 2022, and he was prepared to wait 12 months until we started filming, which is a big commitment. GARDNER It probably wasn't the most popular opinion, really [for Elordi to take on this project]. An Australian TV series at that point in his career, it was a risk and obviously a very calculated one. We're really pleased that he's so proud of the series. Can we talk a little about the casting in general? There's a couple of stand out people in the cast, like Simon Baker, I mean he's incredible in this. But also Thomas Weatherall, the actor who plays Frank Gardiner, a similarly incredible performance. PORTER We had an incredible casting director, but it also speaks to the power of Justin to be the honeypot that they all adore working with. And then the material itself, there are a lot of meaty roles there to play. GARDNER And this speaks to Richard and the absolute beauty of the book, where even though it's relatively small roles like the one that [Simon Baker] played the characterization of that character Keith — who actually is quite different than the book, funnily enough — the characterization of everyone, is just so sharply drawn and that is really attractive to actors to play. Were there like specific production challenges you guys had? Obviously there's trying to recreate Myanmar in Australia, but also the torture scenes — which were hard to watch — how did you film those? GARDNER Practically speaking in terms of structuring the production, we had a lot of very real constraints such as Jacob's time, Simon's time, Odessa's time, also having to structure the weight loss [the boys in the camps go through]. But because we had one director, we were able to shoot it like a film. So we could shoot our actors and locations and because of how the timelines were split, it was actually relatively easy to structure and the stars were all aligned. Ultimately people's availability sort of neatly slotted into those areas. PORTER [Regarding where we shot the production] it did create decision [for us]. Do you travel around and find the locations potentially interstate or not, and we decided that we would base out of Sydney and find the locations around there. There was some away filming, but that was both creatively led and also because of the financing, it often makes more sense in Australia to just shoot within one state. GARDNER We had a lot of support from New South Wales, the state went above and beyond and we really needed it with the financing. PORTER If we couldn't make it work, we would have had to find another solution, but we felt we could find the best creative outcome by basing it [in New South Wales] and it also working within the financing model. GARDNER [The shoot] was really tough. Those boys were really hungry and a little bit hangry, some of them were shredding over Christmas. PORTER Justin is a very visceral truth telling director in his approach to filmmaking and I think actors really enjoy that as an experience, but it's why he's unflinching., his unflinching storytelling both in beauty and also in the horror, I think really shines through. With historical dramas, there are always nitpickers, people who pick holes in things, especially in terms of adaptating a famous book. For me, I noticed that some of the dialogue, there seemed to be some linguistic anachronims. Was that done deliberately? PORTER We didn't want to make a stuffy study, you want to feel these these women and men were alive and bled and [you want to] care for them. It's not meant to be a documentary, it is an examination extremists and and the worst and the best of humanity. That's the lens through which it [depicts] the war and the fire that Dorrigo has to walk through. It's important for the visceral nature of war and the hardship to be accurate, so everybody worked deeply hard to get right the truth of that lived experience. But yes, I think some liberties were probably taken in expression. GARDNER I think it's also really important to make things for an audience. We really want to find a broad audience, and Gen Z is a really massively important audience. We had to open it up. It's so easy to make period piece and there's a veneer of untouchability that you just can't quite necessarily get through. [Justin] has made something that's quite emotionally accessible. Sarah, for Amazon Prime Video Australia, is clearly a very big prestige show, and it has the ingredients and star power to attract an international audience. Are you looking to commission and produce more of these types of prestige dramas? Or was it just a one-off, the chance came up to grab and you had to take it? CHRISTIE When we're looking to curate our slate of Australian originals, we're really looking to cater to a broad Australian audience and have [programming] that speaks to everyone across the board, and across our scripted strategy, film, unscripted. Narrow Road was just one of those projects that really stood out to us, for its prestige quality but also this story in of itself and the team behind it to deliver, we really felt like this could be a big moment for us in terms of our slate and drive conversation. We were speaking about it being a historical piece and I think we were really interested in an important Australian story that hasn't been told that many times and particularly in this way, so we felt there was something there to really bring and connect with Australian customers and also people internationally. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise 'Yellowstone' and the Sprawling Dutton Family Tree, Explained
The Guardian
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘We were all in it together': Jacob Elordi on his wartime epic The Narrow Road to the Deep North
To everyone except fans of the teen drama Euphoria, Jacob Elordi's star seemed to explode from nowhere two years ago. In 2023, Sofia Coppola's Priscilla and Emerald Fennell's Saltburn revealed to global audiences the breadth of the young Queenslander's range – a tormented and controlling Elvis in one vehicle, a charmingly selfish young British aristocrat in the other. They also certified him as a bona fide celebrity and sex symbol – the kind that can inspire lookalike contests. Australians might be forgiven for not knowing the 27-year-old actor is one of us: aside from a handful of small roles (including his feature film debut, aged 17 in Stephan Elliott's Swinging Safari – 'I think I said two words, probably 'shag me',' he says) – he's mostly played Americans and Brits. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Elordi's casting as Dorrigo Evans in the screen adaptation of Richard Flanagan's 2014 Booker prize-winning epic, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, out this month on Prime Video in Australia and later this year on the BBC in the UK, marks his first lead role playing an Australian. Partly inspired by the legendary Edward 'Weary' Dunlop and partly inspired by Flanagan's own father, Dorrigo is an Australian Army medical officer turned Japanese PoW on the Burma-Thailand railway, fighting to keep his comrades alive. He takes psychological refuge from the brutality of the jungle, back-breaking labour and his captors in memories of a unresolved love affair. Like Flanagan's novel, the five-part series takes place within three distinct timeframes: the prewar 'summer of love' Dorrigo shares with his uncle's much younger wife, Amy, played by Odessa Young (warning: graphic sex); the years as a PoW in the jungle (warning: graphic gore); and the 1980s, as an ageing, cynical and emotionally remote Dorrigo (played by Ciarán Hinds) takes stock of his life. The preparation for the PoW scenes was gruelling, requiring more than just emaciated bodies. The reality of forced hard labour coupled with starvation meant Narrow Road's PoW survivors had to be skin and sinew. The cast undertook a medically supervised six-week boot camp in rainforest south of Sydney to achieve the effect. Elordi says the on-screen camaraderie mirrors the close relationships the actors formed while shedding weight over that time. 'We were all in it together, so there was this great overwhelming amount of love in the whole process,' says the actor. 'It was incredibly challenging but deeply necessary, of course … because nobody wanted to phone that in or make a mockery of it.' Narrow Road marks an important first for director Justin Kurzel and screenwriter Shaun Grant – the collaborative duo have never worked on a television series before – but the sense of moral responsibility around retelling traumatic episodes of Australian history is familiar ground. Their 2011 film, Snowtown, told the true story of one of Australia's most grisly series of murders, while their 2021 film, Nitram, examined the events leading up to Tasmania's Port Arthur massacre. Added to this was the gravitas of Flanagan's book, the winner of seven major literary prizes including the Booker, and a work that earned the author the highest of praise, with the Economist dubbing Flanagan 'the finest Australian novelist of his generation' and the New York Review of Books counting him 'among the most versatile writers in the English language'. Like Flanagan, whose father was a Japanese PoW during the second world war, both director and screenwriter felt they had skin in the game. Kurzel's grandfather was one of the Rats of Tobruk, and Grant's grandfather was a survivor of the Burma-Thailand railroad. 'In a lot of ways, [he] was who I was writing it for,' says Grant. 'My grandfather was a very flawed man, and even though I loved him dearly, I may have looked at him and judged him in certain ways. 'When I first read Richard's book, it felt like I really got to know my grandfather for the first time, to feel what he must have gone through … because he never talked about any of that himself. 'The only time I remember him talking about that time was when I mentioned to him I'd watched The Bridge Over the River Kwai. 'We never whistled,' was all he said.' While Hinds' older Dorrigo carries the trauma of survivor's guilt, a disdain for sentimentality and an obsession with self-reliance, Elordi believes his young Dorrigo hints at many of the flaws that only reveal themselves later in the character's life. 'A lot of who he is was there before the war – there's this inherent stoic selfishness … and a lust for the immediacy,' Elordi says of Dorrigo, who embarks on an affair with Amy while engaged to his future wife, Ella (played as a young woman by Olivia DeJonge, and later by a wearily resigned Heather Mitchell). 'He's like a man on an odyssey his whole life – a singular hero's journey – and I think that is greatest flaw,' says Elordi. 'But strangely, in some ways, I also struggle to call it a flaw … it's what made him human, and what got him through the war.' Fellow Tasmanians Kurzel and Flanagan have enjoyed a close friendship for many years, which added a further layer of weighty responsibility to the project, the director says. Some characters in the series come across significantly more sympathetically than in the book: like Simon Baker's Uncle Keith, whose capacity to attract a beautiful young wife and keep her pulling beers behind the sticky counter of his country pub is more believable on screen; and Major Nakamura (Shô Kasamatsu), who seems almost as trapped in the jungle as the Australians he is guarding. This is simply part of the organic process of transforming literature into film, Kurzel says. 'As soon as you put anyone on screen, you find the good and bad in them,' he says. 'That's what's so special about cinema – you can see it on the actors' faces, you can feel another dimension to them.' There was no discussion with Flanagan about redressing one of the few criticisms levelled at the book: that its depiction of the Burma-Thailand railway construction largely ignored the fact that while about 2,800 Australian soldiers perished during its construction, almost 100,000 south-east Asian civilians also lost their lives under the same conditions. Kurzel disputes the criticism. 'There are really beautiful moments and observations in the book from the [Australian] soldiers recognising that other slave labour was happening at the time. And Richard [also] included the point of view of the Japanese soldiers after the war, [and the impact] of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 'But in terms of making a TV series, it is a piece of cinema. There is something so singular about Dorrigo. It is a story told from his point of view and that's the way it played out – we wanted everything to be seen through the prism of Dorrigo.' The Narrow Road to the Deep North will premiere on Prime Video in Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada on 18 April
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jacob Elordi Series ‘The Narrow Road To The Deep North' Sells To Sky, Max, NBCUniversal Ahead Of Berlinale Premiere
EXCLUSIVE: Jacob Elordi-starring series The Narrow Road to the Deep North has been picked up by Sky and Max in Europe along with NBC Universal in Latin America ahead of its Berlinale premiere. Justin Kurzel's adaptation of the Booker Prize-winning Richard Flanagan novel is the highest-profile TV series to be premiering at the Berlinale this year. We can reveal it has sold to Sky for Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland, Max in CEE and NBC Universal for Lat Am. Other deals include RTÉ (Ireland), Movistar Plus+ (Spain), Nova (Greece), AXN (Portugal) and LG Uplus (South Korea). Distributor Sony Pictures Television (SPT) said more sales in the Middle East and Europe are incoming soon. More from Deadline Inanna Sarkis, Gregg Sulkin, Timothy Granaderos & Paris Berelc Sign For Adam Green's Hot Air Balloon Thriller 'Ascent' Ahead Of Malta Shoot - EFM Film Constellation Boards Oscar Hudson's Dark Comedy 'Straight Circle' Produced By 2AM, Magna Studios & Such Korea's Finecut Strikes Distribution Deals For Horror Film 'Noise' & Animation 'Exorcism Chronicles: The Beginning' Sony is yet to strike a deal for Narrow Road in the U.S. It will premiere on Prime Video in Australia, New Zealand and Canada on April 18 and has been picked up by the BBC for the UK. The show premieres on Saturday at a Berlinale Special Gala and Elordi and Kurzel are in town. In Narrow Road, Saltburn star Elordi is Lieutenant-Colonel Dorrigo Evans, an Australian doctor whose all-too-brief love affair with his uncle's wife, Amy Mulvaney (Odessa Young), shaped his life. Told over multiple time periods, the five-parter follows Dorrigo as a Far East prisoner of war during the construction of the Burma Railway. Decades later, he finds his growing celebrity at odds with his feelings of failure and guilt. Based on the 2014 Booker Prize-winning novel by Flanagan, the Australian drama series was written by Shaun Grant (Nitram, Mindhunter) and directed by Kurzel (The Order, Nitram). 'Narrow Road is a sweeping love story with a star-studded cast, anchored by one of today's hottest stars, Jacob Elordi,' said Mike Wald, EVP, International Distribution & Networks, Sony Pictures Entertainment. 'It is beautifully shot, cinematic in scope and, given its five-episode arc, can easily be scheduled across any platform.' Jo Porter and Rachel Gardner of SPT-owned Curio Pictures executive produce. Flanagan, Grant and Kurzel are also executive producers, with Alexandra Taussig serving as producer. Principal production funding is provided by Screen Australia, with assistance from the NSW Government through Screen NSW's Made in NSW and PDV Funds. Best of Deadline A Full Timeline Of Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni's 'It Ends With Us' Feud In Court, Online & In The Media Everything We Know About 'The Night Agent' Season 3 So Far 'A Complete Unknown's Monica Barbaro On Finally Meeting The 'Thoughtful And Wonderful' Joan Baez And A Sweet Moment With Ariana Grande
