Elena Ferrante's wildly popular
Neapolitan novels are to be turned into a TV series directed by
Italian film director Saverio Costanzo.
Casting will start in Naples tomorrow for the series based on
the four novels of the tetralogy: My Brilliant Friend, The Story
of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story
of the Lost Child.
Casting director Laura Muccino is seeking girls to play the
principal roles of Lina and Lenù, characters who have developed
a cult international following.
The series, called The Neapolitan Novels, will tell the tale
of the two female protagonists' interwoven stories from their
childhood at the end of WWII to the turn of the millennium.
Costanzo, whose credits include Private, The Solitude of
Primary Numbers and Hungry Hearts, is writing the screenplay
with Neapolitan novelist Francesco Piccolo and writer Laura
Paolucci, with the help of Ferrante, whose identity is still an
official secret although she was outed last year as a Roman
translator of German feminist fiction, Anita Raja, prompting an
international outcry among the novelist's protective fans.
Raja has previously denied she was the author.
Costanzo told The New York Times in a telephone interview
that he wasn't interested in the author's true identity. "It's
her literary reality that counts," he said. "I'm one of those
people who don't care who she is."
Locations have yet to be chosen but the Campania Film
Commission hopes the whole series can be filmed in Naples, apart
from parts of the works that are set in Milan, Naples and
France.
Costanzo told the NYT that the biggest challenge to adapting
the novels for television was how "to convey the same emotions
as the books in a cinematographic way."
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