Acclaimed author Michel Faber has a new book out. Here, three previous works which have made the journey from page to screen
Under The Skin
In 2013 Sexy Beast director Jonathan Glazer turned Faber’s 2000 science-fiction novel into an award-winning film starring Scarlett Johansson as an alien who tours the Highlands picking up hitch-hikers – though not in a good way. Ahead of filming, Glazer said he “absolutely didn’t want to film the book” but did want to make the book into a film. Faber loves the result, but what does he think Glazer meant? “I think he meant that he didn’t want to feel that he was slavishly attempting to reproduce what the book did, but he wanted to use the book as a springboard for making something extraordinary,” he says. “He certainly did that. I think it’s a film which will grow in stature as time goes by.”
The Crimson Petal And The White
Faber’s 2002 historical novel about a prostitute named Sugar was turned into a four-part television drama starring Romola Garai as Sugar and Chris O’Dowd as her lover, William Rackham. Shirley Henderson, Mark Gatiss, Gillian Anderson and Richard E Grant also starred. “I don’t have a television and I don’t watch television so I can’t judge how much better it was than other things on offer,” says Faber. “But it seemed damned good to me – such a huge book, very cleverly and effectively condensed into four episodes.”
The Book Of Strange New Things
Faber’s 2014 sci-fi novel was turned into a 10-episode radio play for BBC Four shortly after publication and in 2017 Oscar-winning Scottish director Kevin Macdonald adapted it for Amazon under the name Oasis. An hour-long pilot was produced and screened but when Amazon Studios head Roy Price was forced to quit after becoming embroiled in a post-Weinstein sexual harassment claim, the show fell by the wayside and wasn’t picked up for a series. “The project fell apart, which is a shame,” says Faber.
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