Steven Spielberg is producing the adaptation of a best-seller for Netflix and Chris Colombus (Mom, I Missed the Plane, Harry Potter) is writing and directing this feature film.
Netflix has just got its hands on a promising film which brings together Steven Spielberg and Chris Colombus, director of Mom, I Missed the Plane and the first two Harry Potter. Deadline tells us that the platform has acquired the broadcast rights to The Thursday Murder Club, a long-standing project which is finally getting on track.
A Spielberg production at Netflix
The announcement comes just days after the main cast of this adaptation of Richard Osman’s bestselling novel of the same name was confirmed, which includes Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan and Ben Kingsley.
You should know that Steven Spielberg and his production company Amblin Entertainment acquired the rights to adapt the novel in 2020 but the project that Chris Colombus will write and direct took a long time to come together.
Richard Osman, screenwriter, producer and TV host and novelist, announced in his podcast “The Rest Is Entertainment” that filming on the adaptation of his first novel as an author would begin at the end of June in the United Kingdom until in September.
The Thursday Murder Club follows a group of friends in a retirement home who come together to solve murders for fun, but find themselves embroiled in a real case. Helen Mirren plays Elizabeth, a former spy, Ben Kingsley plays Ibrahim, a former psychiatrist, and Pierce Brosnan plays Ron, a former trade unionist.
A new franchise for Netflix?
This new collaboration between Amblin Entertainment and Netflix can be a new success for the platform given that the novel has sold more than 10 million copies and was number 1 in sales in the United Kingdom when it was published in 2020 .
If The Thursday Murder Club meets its audience when it is released on Netflix, the American giant can consider a saga since Richard Osman made it a literary series with several sequels, The following Thursday (2021), The Mystery of the Lost Bullet (2022) and The Last Devil To Die (2023). A fifth novel is even planned for 2025.
The author shared his joy at seeing this project finally enter production. “I’m so proud of this book, so it’s a dream to see The Thursday Murder Club in such incredible hands”did he declare, “From Chris Columbus to Amblin to Netflix, there are geniuses everywhere I look. And what a cast. I pinch myself”.