A scene from the “Cinema Paradiso”, with Salvatore (Philippe Noiret) and Totò (Salvatore Cascio). Clarin archive photo
Paradise cinemathe classic Italian film that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1990 is turning into a high-profile television series, written and directed by its original creator, Giuseppe Tornatore.
According to various US media, the serial production of that adorable story of a boy nicknamed Totò who falls in love with cinema in a Sicilian cinema is well underway. The fiction will have six episodes, it will be titled Paradise and is developed by the manufacturer Marco Belardi (perfect strangers) through its production company Bamboo, launched in February.
Belardi said he is in advanced talks with a streaming platform that will join the project. The Roman manufacturer is currently in the United States negotiating an agreement with Tornatore.
The original film made all viewers cry.
An ode to cinema in an extended format
This Sicilian hymn to the cinema is set to music by Ennio Morricone it was released in Italy in late 1988 and won a Special Jury Prize at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. A year later it won the Oscar for best foreign film and grossed more than $ 12 million in the United States.
Listed as a cult worldwide, the film with Philippe Noiret and boyfriend Salvatore Cascio was re-released in 2020 in the UK through a restored version.
The argument of Paradise “It will be the same as the film, but in an extended format and with different narrative threads,” said Belardi, adding that Tornatore is currently writing a first draft of the program and its pilot chapter, with the aim of starting shooting soon and will be delivered in 2023.
Giuseppe Tornatore posed before a screening of his film in Los Angeles in 2014. Photo Reuters
According to the draft cited by Belardi himself, the series will address the themes raised by the film, such as “the strength of a mother, the solidarity of a friend, sex as taboo, forced removals and evasions, marked social differences.”
Indeed, Tornatore is putting together the backstories of the main characters in the fictional Sicilian town of Giancaldo, where the story takes place. Paradise cinema.
Those characters should be a cross-section of the Italian generations who restarted their lives after surviving the Second World War, part of a plot crossed by the passion for post-war cinema.
A parallel documentary and an agreement with Netflix
Simultaneously with the series, Belardi explained that he intends to produce a documentary on the origin of Paradise cinemaboth from a creative and a productive point of view. Even if that side project has not yet been given the green light.
Photo of the original movie poster, which will now be a series of 6 chapters.
Until recently, Belardi was the head of the film and television company Lotus Production, which produced the Italian mega-hit. perfect strangers and generated other more local events such as the film There is no place like homeby Gabriele Muccino, which grossed over $ 10 million in Italy in 2018 and is now a popular Sky television series.
Belardi also said that Bamboo recently signed an agreement with Netflix to produce two or three Italian originals unspecified for the platform.
On the other hand, there is another deal in which Netflix has acquired the streaming rights of three other films that Bamboo will produce.
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Source: Clarin
