A press release directly from Mammoth Screen. Click in the picture to enlarge it.Cathy and Heathcliff reach new Heights for ITVMore information on previous posts.
A classic adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is currently in production for ITV in Yorkshire.
Top UK Indie Mammoth Screen has commissioned leading contemporary screen and television writer Peter Bowker to adapt Emily Bronte’s world famous love story. Two 90 minute episodes are being filmed in Yorkshire, directed by Coky Giedroyc. Tom Hardy will play dark and brooding Heathcliff alongside newcomer Charlotte Riley as Cathy.
Acclaimed television actress Sarah Lancashire will take on the role of housekeeper Nelly, while Andrew Lincoln is Edgar, Cathy’s forlorn husband. Burn Gorman stars as Cathy’s brother Hindley, and Kevin McNally will play Mr Earnshaw.
Wuthering Heights will be executive produced by Michele Buck and Damien Timmer, and produced by Radford Neville for Mammoth Screen. Michele and Damien’s recent credits include Lost in Austen, Agatha Christie’s Marple, the Inspector Morse spin off Lewis and the BAFTA winning Housewife 49 starring Victoria Wood.
Damien Timmer yesterday said:“Wuthering Heights is one of the greatest love stories in literature. We've assembled a first class team to capture all of the novel's rawness and passion.”Michele Buck added:“Peter Bowker is one of the country’s leading contemporary writers and we are privileged to be working with him. He has written a highly emotional piece that remains true to Emily Bronte’s epic story.”Peter Bowker remarked:"I was thrilled to be asked to adapt one of the great English novels. Mammoth Screen are the perfect company to work with on a project as adventurous and bold as this. In Charlotte Riley I believe we have found the perfect Cathy and Tom Hardy has the power and charisma to be the definitive Heathcliff."Wuthering Heights has been commissioned by Laura Mackie and Sally Haynes, ITV’s drama commissioning team.
Wuthering Heights is supported by Screen Yorkshire through its Production Fund.
The PBS Pressroom publishes a press release about the upcoming broadcast of Wuthering Heights's new TV series with complete cast information and some new pictures (click on them to enlarge them, Credits: ©Mammoth Screen Production/ITV for MASTERPIECE):A story of undying love—and revengeCategories: Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë
on MASTERPIECE CLASSIC
Sundays, January 18 and 25, 2009 at 9pm ET on PBS
The fiery romance of Heathcliff and Cathy reignites in a lush new adaptation of Emily Brontë’s incendiary love story, Wuthering Heights, airing in two parts on MASTERPIECE CLASSIC, on Sundays, January 18 and 25, 2009 at 9pm ET on PBS (check local listings).
British heartthrob Tom Hardy (who will play Bill Sikes in MASTERPIECE’s new Oliver Twist, airing in February) stars as Heathcliff, the mysterious gypsy adopted as a boy by the Earnshaw family of Wuthering Heights. Newcomer Charlotte Riley is Heathcliff’s stepsister, Catherine Earnshaw (Cathy), who accepts him into her home—and heart.
Also appearing are Burn Gorman (Bleak House) as Cathy’s sadistic brother, Hindley; Andrew Lincoln (Love Actually) as the Earnshaw’s straight-laced neighbor Edgar Linton, who is also Cathy’s suitor; and Rosalind Halstead (Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason) as Edgar’s pliant younger sister, Isabella.
Set on the Yorkshire moors in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Wuthering Heights is a turbulent tale of passions unleashed across two generations, as Heathcliff rises out of a
servile position to work his fiendish will on the Earnshaws and Lintons—all out of love for the unattainable Cathy.
What’s new about this adaptation is its focus on the intertwined fates of the generation
following Heathcliff, Cathy, Edgar, Isabella, and Hindley and his wife, Frances (Sia Berkeley). These characters produce three children— Heathcliff’s son Linton (Tom Payne); Cathy’s daughter and namesake, Catherine (Rebecca Night); and Hindley’s son, Hareton (Andrew Hawley)—who grow up and figure prominently in the climax of the film.
Published in 1847, Wuthering Heights scandalized contemporary critics. A prominent
journal called it “one of the most repellant books we ever read.” The eventual revelation that the author, Ellis Bell, was in fact a pseudonym used by a country vicar’s daughter, Emily Brontë, made the consternation even more acute, since many were convinced that no woman could possibly have written such a book.
Emily turned out to be the sister of Charlotte Brontë, whose sexually charged Jane Eyre had created its own sensation just two months before the publication of Wuthering Heights.
The richly inventive Brontës included another literary sister, Anne, whose disturbing novel of marital breakdown, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, appeared in 1848—the same year that Emily tragically died at age 30 of tuberculosis, having no chance to create another masterpiece to succeed Wuthering Heights.
Wuthering Heights is a co-production of Mammoth Screen and WGBH/Boston. It is adapted by Peter Browker (Blackpool), and directed by Coky Giedroyc (Oliver Twist). The executive producers are Michele Buck, Damien Timmer, Hugo Heppell for Mammoth Screen and Rebecca Eaton for WGBH.
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
Part 1 – January 18, 2009 at 9pm on PBS
The fiery Heathcliff (Tom Hardy) grows to manhood with the Earnshaw family of Wuthering Heights, tormented by his stepbrother, Hindley (Burn Gorman, Bleak House), and falling in love with his stepsister, Cathy (Charlotte Riley). But he has a rival for Cathy’s heart.
Part 2 – January 25, 2009 at 9pm on PBS
Heathcliff returns to Wuthering Heights as a rich man after a long and mysterious absence. Still pained by his love for Cathy, he sets to work wreaking revenge on two generations of those who wronged him.
Cast & credit list
Heathcliff................... Tom Hardy (The Virgin Queen, Oliver Twist)
Cathy.......................... Charlotte Riley
Edgar.......................... Andrew Lincoln (Love Actually)
Nelly............................ Sarah Lancashire (Oliver Twist)
Hindley....................... Burn Gorman (Bleak House)
Isabella........................ Rosalind Halstead (Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason)
Catherine...................... Rebecca Night
Linton........................... Tom Payne
Hareton....................... Andrew Hawley
Mr Earnshaw................ Kevin R Mcnally
Joseph........................... Des Mcaleer
Doctor Kenneth........... Shaughan Seymour
Young Heathcliff.......... Declan Wheeldon
Young Cathy................. Alexandra Pearson
Young Hindley.............. Joseph Taylor
Production Credits
Adapted by........................................ Peter Browker (Blackpool)
From the classic novel by Emily Brontë
Director............................................. Coky Giedroyc (The Virgin Queen)
Executive Producer........................... Michele Buck
Damien Timmer
Hugo Heppell
Executive Producer for WGBH............. Rebecca Eaton
Peter [Bowker, the writer] commented on Wuthering Heights: "Jealousy, love, passion, violence and hallucinations played out against an unforgiving landscape and driving rain. It can only be Wuthering Heights or a night out in Manchester in the 70's. Since I am over-familiar with both I feel ready to take on the challenge of adapting the greatest novel ever written about the destructive power of love. Put like that it doesn't sound too difficult, does it?"Hebden Bridge Web, explains a little bit more about the Protect the Colden Valley Campaign, that Juliet Barker, among others, supports and that we mentioned some days ago:
Executive Producer for Mammoth Screen, Damien Timmer, recently left ITV Productions to form his own company. While developing a number of projects for various broadcasters, he will continue to executive produce several projects for ITV Productions, including The Prisoner which will be broadcast by Sky and the on-going Marple series for ITV1.
Damien’s recent work includes Russell T Davies’ Casanova, Walk Away And I Stumble, and the Inspector Morse spin off Lewis. Upcoming work includes Dracula for BBC1, The History of Mr Polly starring Lee Evans, Anne Marie Duff and Julie Graham and Housewife 49, written by and starring Victoria Wood, both for ITV1.
Damien Timmer said: “Mammoth Screen’s goal is to work with the very best writing talent on a variety of bold projects, and Peter Bowker’s take on Emily Bronte and Wuthering heights should make for very bold TV indeed! In the last few years Peter’s written a number of very striking modern re-workings of classic tales, and it’s a real privilege to be working with him on his first ‘period’ classic adaptation.”
Casting for Wuthering Heights will begin next year.
A couple of days ago we posted about Henry Miller and W. Somerset Maugham's ideal libraries and how Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights was included in both of them. Now, we read in this review published on Buzzle.com of E.M. Forster's Aspects of the novel (1927), how the author of A Room with a ViewJuliet Barker said, "I am delighted to lend my support to the Protect the Colden Valley Campaign. It seems to me that this development has nothing to do with ecological principles, concern for the environment or indeed for the local community or tourist industry.
"The Colden Valley is a tranquil and beautiful area, rich in wildlife, archaeological interest, and literary association, from the Brontes to Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.
"The negative impact of second homes on local communities and their services has been well documented. And it concerns me that the proposed development is on greenfield land. If this proposal is allowed to succeed, - on any scale - it would set a dangerous precedent and open the floodgates for future speculative developers – not just in this area but in the rest of the Calder Valley."
(...) uses examples from wide-ranging works to make his points, from War and Peace and Wuthering Heights to--well, to some obscure novels from his own period that none of us have heard of or will hear of again. But it doesn’t matter: he provides the perfect examples from each book to bolster his arguments and explain his points. (Lisa Silverman)Dame Darcy's illustrated edition of Jane Eyre is mentioned in Newsday and LA Weekly reminds us of her next Jane Eyre signing:
LA LUZ DE JESUS GALLERY Thu, Nov 16 9:00 pmThere's a new chance today, November 14, to attend Dr. Tonya Krause's lecture on Jane Eyre. Same time and details as the last one that we posted.
The amazing comic-book artist signs her newest book, The Illustrated Jane Eyre.
4633 Hollywood Blvd. , Hollywood
Truth #2 is that the big titles are coming around faster and faster. Mammoth Screen's upcoming Wuthering Heights comes 11 years after the previous version, which now seems like pre-history.He is right in that. When it comes to Wuthering Heights, many people feel that no version has even come close to doing justice to the novel, with the arguable exception of Wuthering Heights 1939, which by those standards must be pre-pre-pre-pre-history. With Jane Eyre, on the other hand, a good many people have a favourite version which they claim is as close and loyal to the novel as possible, but - as we see it - that is not the case with any version of Wuthering Heights generally speaking.
Informed less by millennia of vampire tales, or centuries of fiction, then films, Twilight is also grossly indebted to Jane Eyre and that novel's own brutish, wild Edward (Rochester), dangerous pastoral setting and plain-Jane heroine.'Brutish, wild Edward', huh?
While Meyer's Bella reads Jane Austen, it puts her to sleep: The sexually omnivorous imagination of Charlotte Bronte is awakened when, as with Rochester meeting Jane, Edward meets Bella and behaves like a furious animal, which, of course, makes him all the more, meta-Harlequin alluring. (Lynn Crosbie)
Marling also read Jane Eyre three times in the three months before she made the album. 'I love that Brontë era, the creepy, dark romance. It's funny how much what you're reading influences what you think.' (Alice Fisher)Salon.com reviews Margaret Atwood's Payback:
That fiery gypsy Heathcliff may have loved and lost Cathy, but he paid her back by snatching up her encumbered estate. (As Atwood drolly notes, "The best nineteenth-century revenge is not seeing your enemy's red blood all over the floor but seeing the red ink all over his balance sheet.") (Louis Bayard)And Eureka Street also uses Wuthering Heights as an example to introduce an article on 'migrants':
In a famous scene in English Literature, conventional Lockwood, the outsider unable to find his way home, is doubly displaced when he is forced to stay the night at Wuthering Heights, a house so strange as to be a foreign land. During the night he experiences a dream-haunting: Catherine, dead 20 years, comes to his broken window and begs and pleads to be let in. Lockwood, terrified, rubs her wrist to and fro upon the shards of glass.Kent News (the news website of the State University of Kent, Ohio)has an article on theatre labs, and a costume lab currently working on Jane Eyre turns up:
Migrants are like Heathcliff's Cathy, tapping persistently at the window of the past. They realise they can never truly go home again, yet their hearts and spirits continue to yearn. (Gillian Bouras)
Kent's theater productions also benefit from the lab classes. Currently, students are working on costumes for the School of Theatre and Dance's production of "Jane Eyre," opening next semester. "They are making orphan costumes because we have lots of orphans," Russell said, "so we figured it would be a good project for them." (Lauren Crist)On the blogosphere we find a couple of new readers: The Walking Canvas is reading Jane Eyre and YU has just started The Life of Charlotte Brontë. Hopefully the latter will take some things with a pinch of salt.
Two of his colleagues - Michele Buck, controller of ITV productions, and Damien Timmer, executive producer on Where The Heart Is and Touching Evil at United Productions - decided to follow suit, setting up Mammoth Productions, which appears to be heralding a new era in ITV drama by itself; it's responsible for Lost in Austen as well as the forthcoming remake of The Prisoner and a retelling of Wuthering Heights. (Stephen Armstrong)The keyword here is 'retelling'. Weird.
[The organ] was originally donated to the Manningham Church by the McTurk sisters who’s [sic] father Dr McTurk had tended to Charlotte Bronte at the end of her life. (Paddy McGuffin)And a couple of recommended blog posts for today: Wuthering Expectations talks about two novels Wuthering Heights seems reminiscent of, and Book-a-holic reviews Wide Sargasso Sea.
ITV has commissioned a new version of Emily Bronte's gothic love story 'Wuthering Heights', underlining its efforts to polish up its main channel with more period drama.We remind our readers that this is not the only Wuthering Heights project around. Ecosse Films has a feature film project written by Olivia Hetreed.The three-hour adaptation of the nineteenth century novel will be screened either in late 2007 or early 2008, after a series of Jane Austen dramas next year.
It was commissioned by Laura Mackie, ITV's controller of drama, and will be produced by Mammoth Screen, a new independent production company set up by former ITV drama producer Damien Timmer.
The writer is Peter Bowker, who was behind the BBC's 'Blackpool' musical thriller and 'The Canterbury Tales: The Miller's Tale'. It has not yet been cast.
Classic costume drama remains a reliable crowd-puller, with the BBC's recent four-part adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre' attracting 6.7m viewers for its final episode.
ITV has already lined up three Jane Austen novels for next year: 'Mansfield Park', 'Northanger Abbey' and 'Persuasion'.
“Wuthering Heights is one of the most haunting and passionate novels in English literature, and Heathcliff and Cathy are two of the most memorable characters of all time. We’re sure that Peter’s fresh approach to the adaptation will delight the ITV1 audience.”Categories: Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights
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