Showtime has just purchased 20 episodes of a series based on last September’s “Purity,” the beloved-ish recent installment to the Jonathan Franzen canon. Franzen himself will also co-write the “tragicomedy” with Todd Field (In The Bedroom, Eyes Wide Shut) and David Hare (The Hours, The Reader).
“Jonathan Franzen’s Purity is an epic American novel that pulses with the energy of a psychological thriller. I whipped through it in a week,” Showtime Networks president and CEO David Nevins said in a press release. “His gripping and timely story has attracted a powerhouse team.”
That powerhouse team will include Daniel Craig, Field, Scott Rudin, Franzen, Hare, and Eli Bush, who are all listed as executive producers. This will be Craig’s first major onscreen project since his Bond days (maybe Tom Hiddleston will take his job, maybe a woman, maybe whatever). Craig will also star this fall in a New York Theatre Workshop production of Othello, with David Oyelowo (who has his own connection to the Bond franchise).
No news yet on who will play the main character, Pip, but it sure better be someone with similar fame as Craig’s, lest Franzen’s whole point of making something female-centric will be completely moot.