Brow Beat

HBO Will Broadcast the Elena Ferrante Television Adaptation We’ve Been Waiting For

Auguri, Americans!

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That Elena Ferrante TV series we’ve been waiting for is now one step closer to reaching American audiences: HBO has announced that it is bringing an eight-episode adaptation of Ferrante’s book My Brilliant Friend to the U.S., co-produced by Wildside, Fandango Productions, and Italy’s public service broadcaster, RAI. The book is the first in a quartet of incredibly popular novels by pseudonymous author Ferrante known as the Neapolitan novels, centered around the class struggles, friendship, and rivalry of two women from Naples.

HBO’s press release only addresses the adaptation of My Brilliant Friend, but since the original plan has always been to adapt the entire quartet, there is the potential for HBO to later pick up adaptations of the novel’s three sequels, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child.

“An exploration of the complicated intensity of female friendship, these ambitious stories will no doubt resonate with the HBO audience,” said HBO’s programming chief Casey Bloys, in a statement. Francesco Piccolo, Laura Paolucci and Saverio Costanzo will write the episodes alongside the now not-so-enigmatic Ferrante herself. Costanzo will also direct all eight episodes.

No casting announcements have yet been made, but the series begins shooting in Naples this summer, which seems like a perfect opportunity to send some relatively unknown Neapolitan actresses to stardom. Mercifully, the show will be filmed in Italian, not English. An English-language stage adaptation that encompasses the entire quartet is currently on in London.