BBC developing The English Patient as a drama series

Deadline

Author Michael Ondaatje's 1992 World War II-set novel that Anthony Minghella adapted as a 1996 Oscar Best Picture-winning film is getting a TV adaptation from Miramax Television and Paramount Television Studios. According to Deadline, "the drama series represents a new interpretation of Ondaatje’s book, which follows four dissimilar people brought together at an Italian villa during World War II, and not a remake of the 1996 Miramax feature film adaptation directed by Anthony Minghella that won nine Oscars including Best Picture. The book, which was published in 1992, follows a unrecognisably burned man — the eponymous patient, presumed to be English — his Canadian Army nurse, a Sikh British Army sapper and a Canadian thief. Set behind the North African and Italian campaigns of the Second World War, the book is told out of sequence and moves back and forth between the patient’s memories before his accident and the current evens at the bomb-damaged Italian monastery." The film adaptation of The English Patient was nominated for 12 Oscars, winning nine, including Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Director.