HOLLYWOOD – The Weinstein’s War and Peace mini-series – to be co-produced with the BBC – will be a truncated version, sources admit.
Paul Dano is set to star as Pierre Bezuhkov, the pacifist hero of Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel. He will be joined by Ade Edmondson as Count Rostov, as well as Stephen Rea and Greta Scacchi.
Andrew Davies was given the job of adapting the massive Russian masterpiece, but reports from the Weinsteins were that his version was too long.
Harvey just didn’t like it. There was too much about relationships and peasants and far too much about the Russian soil. Russia is a bit of a downer at the moment. What with Putin and all that. So let’s just say that Harvey had some notes.
What changes can we expect?
We wanted to change the setting, away from Russia and towards New Mexico, but Andrew and the BBC were opposed to that. So we at least managed to get the narrative moving a little. If you’ve read the book, you’ll know that it features some of the most amazing set pieces ever put to paper. But then there are all these conversations. So what we did was get rid of the conversations and concentrate a lot more on the military aspect.
War will be broadcast in 2015.