In case it wasn’t clear that Daniel Craig gives zero fucks about making time in his calendar to play James Bond again, the actor has decided to spend a good chunk of next year making a television event series.
Showtime has scooped up “Purity,” the 20-episode adaptation of Jonathan Franzen‘s novel, that will have every single entry directed by Todd Field, who will also co-write the scripts with the author and David Hare (“The Hours,” “The Reader“). It will mark the filmmaker’s first effort behind the camera since 2006’s great “Little Children,” and while the wait has been long, 20 hours of drama from Field is just fine by me. And frankly, he’s probably eager to get working too after seeing a small handful of movies —”Beautiful Ruins,” “As It Happens,” “The White Tiger,” “The Creed Of Violence,” “Battered Bastards Of Baseball” — fail to gain traction.
“Purity” will center around a young, idealist woman named Pip Tyler, who falls into a relationship with German activist, Andreas Wolf (to be played by Craig), with the tale taking the characters around the world, with plenty of sex and intrigue to spice things up. Here’s the book synopsis:
Purity is a grand story of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder. The author of The Corrections and Freedom has imagined a world of vividly original characters–Californians and East Germans, good parents and bad parents, journalists and leakers–and he follows their intertwining paths through landscapes as contemporary as the omnipresent Internet and as ancient as the war between the sexes.
Production will begin on “Purity” in 2017, and the series will air across two years. As for Craig, this fall he’ll shoot Steven Soderbergh‘s “Logan Lucky,” and roll his eyes if you keep asking him about 007. [Deadline]
