Brooklyn, a film that earned Saoirse Ronan an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress, is getting a TV adaptation after only hitting theaters just three months ago — and it’s coming without its leading lady. The one person (so far) who is returning, however, is Julie Walters.
Variety reports that the actress, who earned nominations from BAFTA and the British Independent Film Awards for playing landlady Ma Kehoe, will reprise her role for the TV adaptation. Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey’s Wildgaze Films produced the film and will return to produce this version from BBC.
Debuting last November, the film, directed by John Crowley from an adapted screenplay by Nick Hornby, featured Ronan as Eilis Lacey, a young immigrant traveling from Ireland to Brooklyn in the 1950s. Drawn by the American Dream, she falls in love in the States, but later becomes torn between the two countries when her past comes back into the picture. Jim Broadbent, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson, Jessica Paré, and Emily Bett Rickards also featured. The TV show, meanwhile, will focus on Kehoe’s New York boarding house and “the same group of Irish, British and American young women.” Not much else is known about the project, though that’ll change once writers are officially hired.
If you asked me which of the 2015 film slate was getting a TV adaptation, Brooklyn would be my last guess. It didn’t even have an outlandish box office debut in the U.K. Nevertheless, perhaps with the right writing team behind it, a Brooklyn series could become the next Downton Abbey.
BROOKLYN tells the profoundly moving story of Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), a young Irish immigrant navigating her way through 1950s Brooklyn. Lured by the promise of America, Eilis departs Ireland and the comfort of her mother’s home for the shores of New York City. The initial shackles of homesickness quickly diminish as a fresh romance sweeps Eilis into the intoxicating charm of love. But soon, her new vivacity is disrupted by her past, and Eilis must choose between two countries and the lives that exist within.
