The Big Sick actor Kumail Nanjiani will co-write and star in a television adaptation of the 1985 indie film My Beautiful Laundrette, Variety reported. The project is yet to find a distributor.
The Pakistani-American comedian had his breakout role as programmer Dinesh Chughtai in HBO’s television series Silicon Valley.
Directed by Stephen Frears and with a screenplay by Hanif Kureishi, My Beautiful Laundrette revolves around Omar Ali (Gordon Warnecke), a British-Pakistani man who is asked to turn a ramshackle laundromat into a profitable business. He meets his old friend Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis), a right-wing extremist street punk, and rekindles a romantic relationship with him. My Beautiful Laundrette was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, but lost to Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters.
The TV adaptation will have 10 episodes and will be executive produced by Academy Award-winning writer-director Stephen Gaghan along with Kureishi and Silicon Valley’s Alec Berg.