Colette and The Imitation Game star Keira Knightley has found her next period drama – an adaptation of Sarah Perry’s novel The Essex Serpent for Apple TV+, Deadline reports.
Peter White and Jake Kanter for Deadline:
It will be directed by Dark River and The Selfish Giant director Clio Barnard and is written by Mrs Wilson writer Anna Symon.
The Essex Serpent follows newly widowed Cora, played by Knightley, who, having being released from an abusive marriage, relocates from Victorian London to the small village of Aldwinter in Essex, intrigued by a local superstition that a mythical creature known as the Essex Serpent has returned to the area.
The drama was commissioned by Apple out of the UK by Apple’s Heads of Worldwide Video, Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht, and Creative Director for Europe Worldwide Video, Jay Hunt.
Apple hired Jay Hunt – the former controller of BBC One and chief creative officer of Channel Four – to join Apple TV+ in late 2017. Earlier in the year, Apple revealed it had hired two top Sony Pictures TV executives, Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg, to oversee all aspects of worldwide video programming for Apple TV+/
MacDailyNews Take: Looks like yet another winner for Apple TV+!
Being a good Essex girl (at least at heart) Im sure Ms knightly will give it her all.