The adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s critically acclaimed 2001 novel, The Corrections, has long been in the making, and has recently transitioned from its initial expected film adaptation to be turned into a series for HBO.
We heard late last year that the brilliant Ewan McGregor had signed on to join Chris Cooper and Dianne Wiest for the project, which is being co-written by Franzen and the Oscar-nominated writer-director Noah Baumbach.
Now comes the excellent news, via The Playlist, Deadline, and the Daily Mail, that the already terrific casting continues with Maggie Gyllenhaal, Rhys Ifans, Greta Gerwig, and Bruce Norris all in talks to join the project too.
Courtesy of Waterstones, the original novel’s plot looks a little like this:
“From the author of ‘Freedom’, a panoramic vision of America at the beginning of the 21st century, seen through the turbulent lives of the Lambert family. The Corrections is now seen by many as one of the greatest American novels of the last decade. The Lamberts — Enid and Alfred and their three grown-up children — are a troubled family living in a troubled age. Alfred is ill and as his condition worsens the whole family must face the failures, secrets and long-buried hurts that haunt them if they are to make the corrections that each desperately needs. Stretching from the Midwest in the mid-century to Wall Street and Eastern Europe in the age of globalised greed, ‘The Corrections’ brings an old-time America of freight trains and civic duty into wild collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare, and New Economy millionaires. It announces Jonathan Franzen as one of the most brilliant interpreters of American society and the American soul.”
Cooper and Wiest are set to play the parents of the Lambert family; McGregor is to play Chip, the middle son; and Gyllenhall is in talks for the role of Denise, the youngest child, a bisexual Philadelphia chef. Ifans would be taking a cameo as a Lithuanian gangster drawing Chip into his world; Norris would play the eldest son, Gary; and Gerwig would play Chip’s film producer girlfriend.
The exact nature of the project until now has been kept under wraps, but it seems that the intentions are now becoming clear, with a two-hour pilot planned under Baumbach’s direction, and then if all goes well and everyone is impressed, a further four seasons each made up of ten hour-long episodes, which is certainly a significant adaptation. Franzen’s original novel is quite a long book at more than five hundred pages, but a four season-long adaptation suggests that the intention is to add more to the characters’ stories than is in the Franzen’s original, which I’m really excited about.
I’m a really big fan of Gyllenhaal’s, so the news that she’s in talks to join the already brilliant cast is definitely exciting. Getting to see her, McGregor, and the whole cast for four full-length seasons of HBO quality (you can’t deny HBO’s impeccable programming) is a prospect almost too good to be true. More news as we get it.
