Narcos producer Gaumont will co-produce a series based on British Indian author Preti Taneja’s award-winning novel We That Are Young, Variety reported. Gaumont will collaborate on the series with Dina Dattani, who has previously produced the movie Ashram, Variety added.
We That Are Young, a reimagining of William Shakespear’s King Lear, is centred on an Indian business dynasty headed by an autocratic patriarch. The novel examines homosexuality, female sexual liberation, pressures of a single-parent household, caste, treatment of domestic help, violence, god-men and madness. Taneja won the Desmond Elliott Prize for debut novelists for her book in 2018.
“Preti Taneja’s We That Are Young chooses for her King Lear an ageing misogynist and abuser at the helm of a wildly successful and unsurprisingly corrupt business family with hotels and spas all over India,” Scroll.in said in its review. “The retelling mines the original’s grandiose twists and Machiavellian characters to show how some families choose not to sidestep impending disaster and to reveal that even a four-hundred-year movement in time has not brought the necessary self-awareness and shift in human character.”
Gene Stein, president, television, Gaumont U.S, told Variety, “We intend to shoot this series on location in India with the highest degree of authenticity while creating an elevated dramatic storyline with true global appeal.”
Dina Dattani, who acquired the television rights to the book when it was published, told Variety, “Preti Taneja’s ‘King Lear’ story works remarkably well with a critical look at the balance of power in contemporary India through its three female protagonists in charge of a powerful dynasty in a patriarchal society.”
