Beyond Whole Foods, IMDB, Box Office Mojo, Goodreads, and your mind, Amazon also now owns a whole lot of fictional murdered British people: the company has purchased the rights to a bulk of material by late mystery master Agatha Christie. As of now, the only project being publicized is Ordeal By Innocence, an adaptation of the novel (which already comprised a season of Agatha Christie’s Marple and was made into a Donald Sutherland/Christopher Plummer-starring film in 1985), with Bill Nighy, Catherine Keener, Alice Eve, Ella Purnell and Matthew Goode already cast. In fact, according to the Hollywood Reporter, Ordeal already began production at the beginning of the month. The deal with Agatha Christie Limited also involves various other yet-to-be-announced adaptations of the author’s work.
The 1958 novel Ordeal of Innocence sees every member of the Argyle family becomeing…you guessed it, a suspected murderer. The family dynamic, you see, had already been wounded when the matriarch, Rachel Argyle, was allegedly killed by her adopted son, Jacko, and then when he went to prison and died therein. But following the death, a certain Arthur Calgary shows up and confesses that he actually could’ve affirmed Jacko’s alibi, claiming that Jacko was innocent — and thereby suggesting the real murderer must still be within the family.
As another part of the deal, Amazon also is getting exclusive premium streaming rights for two other preexisting Agatha Christie adaptations from BBC One: And Then There Were None and The Witness for the Prosecution. This all adds up to what may be something of an Agathainnaisance (yes, that suffix does need to be retired), what with Kenneth Branagh’s totally separate Murder on the Orient Express film set for release on November 10.
Watch the trailer for BBC One’s And Then There Were None: