Birdsong

Michael had been attached to this but now it seems the book will be made into a tv miniseries:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1384104/BAZ-BAMIGBOYE-Birdsong-calls-Clemence-Poesy-Eddie-Redmayne.html

Birdsong calls out to Clemence Poesy and Eddie Redmayne
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By Baz Bamigboye Last updated at 9:15 AM on 6th May 2011

Answering the Birdsong: Actress Clemence Poesy will lead in the three-part television series based on the novel

The heartbreaking story of clandestine romance and trench warfare captured in the best-selling novel Birdsong will go before the cameras, with Eddie Redmayne and Clemence Poesy as the passionate but illicit lovers.

The two actors, both fast-rising stars, will lead the three-part television production, which will begin filming on locations in Hungary in the middle of next month.

Birdsong, written by Sebastian Faulks and published to much acclaim in 1993, begins in pre-World War I northern France as a love story between young Englishman Stephen Wraysford, who works in Amiens, and Isabelle Azaire, the much younger, unhappy second wife of a bullying textile factory owner.

Faulks later hurls us into the hell of Flanders in 1916 and we meet Stephen — who by this time is a soldier on the Western Front — again.

The other important character here is Jack Firebrace (a part as yet uncast) — a tunneller who seems to represent the bravery of the ordinary Englishman.

The book sold more than three million copies in the UK, and millions more around the globe. Tim Bevan at Working Title snapped up the rights.

But despite calling on the talents of directors such as Joe Wright, Sam Mendes and Peter Weir, he couldn’t get it made for the big screen.

Now, award-winning director Philip Martin — he shot Prime Suspect, Hawking and Wallander — will direct Birdsong as a major series for BBC TV and Working Title Television, using a screenplay penned by Abi Morgan.

Casting Redmayne is a coup. Everyone wants him for movies, TV and the stage.

He won Olivier and Tony awards for his performance in the Donmar Theatre play Red, and stars with Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh in the much-anticipated film My Week With Marilyn.
In December, he will play Richard II in Michael Grandage’s final play as the Donmar’s artistic director.

Clemence is well known to fans of the Harry Potter pictures, in which she plays Fleur Delacour.

Interestingly, she will also be appearing in a production of Richard II — however she’ll be playing opposite Ben Whishaw in a version to be directed by Rupert Goold for the BBC and Neal Street Productions.