Elena Ferrante’s Beloved Book Series Is Headed To HBO

“My Brilliant Friend” will hopefully become a brilliant show.
Europa

Ferrante Fever is spreading.

A four-book series set in Naples in the 1970s, about friendship, political tumult and how our memories of childhood shift as we age, will be adapted into an HBO series, The Hollywood Reporter says.

HBO will partner with Italian broadcaster RAI to turn the books ― written originally in Italian and translated into English, among several other languages ― into an eight-part series.

The announcement comes as one of HBO’s first prestigious, woman-centric shows, “Big Little Lies,” winds down, leaving its mark as a critical success.

“My Brilliant Friend” will be set in Naples and filmed in Italian, and co-written by the author herself, who’s notoriously elusive. (Elena Ferrante is her pen name; her true identity was controversially revealed last year.)

It’s possible that the book ― an internal and reflective story, prioritizing personal relationships over a city’s surrounding tumult ― will be tricky to bring to the screen. But, with the author involved, it’s also possible that the show will be as brilliant as the book itself.

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