Indiana Production has acquired rights to The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s masterpiece, to make an English-language TV series which is currently under development. The project is the result of a collaboration with Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore and is currently in search of potential European partners in Cannes. Right in Cannes, in 1963, Luchino Visconti won the Palme d’Or for his film adaptation of the novel, which entered the film history by right.

The project is rather ambitious and is planned to have a similar development to blockbuster series such as The Crown or Downton Abbey. Production is planned for 2019 in several Sicilian locations.

“The series will be a saga telling the story of a country during a time of profound changes involving the entire Europe” Indiana Production’s Fabrizio Donvito said. Besides Donvito, the other producers will be Marco Cohen, Benedetto Habib, Daniel Campos Pavoncelli and Ilaria Castiglioni.

“It’s not about a remake of Visconti’s movie” Cohen explains, “our purpose is to be as close as possible to the story elements of the novel, shooting in the locations described in the original text”.