Greg Grandin’s Pultizer prize-nominated book Fordlandia is set to be adapted into a television series directed by Werner Herzog, Deadline reported. Set in the 1920s, the non-fiction work details industrialist Henry Ford’s attempt to recreate small-town America in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. Ford, who was the richest man in the world at the time, envisioned the city as a Utopia and a source of cultivated rubber for the automobile manufacturing operations of the Ford Motor Company, but his project failed and the city was abandoned in 1934.
The Fordlandia series will be written by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Christopher Wilkinson, who has previously scripted Nixon (1995), Ali (2001) and Pawn Sacrifice (2014). The series is being developed by Ashok Amritraj’s Hyde Park Entertainment Group.
“Fordlandia is an incredible true story and we are thrilled to be working with Werner, one of the world’s most iconic filmmakers, and Chris, a truly exceptional writer,” Amritraj told Deadline. “The story of a tycoon with absolute power imposing his vision of America on the world is extremely relevant today.”
A prominent figure in New German Cinema, Herzog received the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1982 for the Amazonian adventure-drama Fitzcarald. His recent credits include the documentary Into the Inferno (2016), thriller Salt and Fire (2016) and Nicole Kidman and Robert Pattinson-starrer Queen of the Desert (2015).
