Christopher Hampton has done well working from Choderlos de Laclos’ 18th century novel Les Liasisons Dangereuses. He scored a Tony nomination when he adapted it into a play, and his script for Stephen Frears’ 1988 film Dangerous Liaisons won him an Oscar. So he can be forgiven for going back to his favourite source material, this time pitching a drama series now being developed by the BBC with the intent of finding a US network to co-produce it.
As opposed to revisiting the situations used in either the play or the film, the show will head straight back to the literary material and dig up new elements. They will then be combined with characters and plots from other novels in the libertine literary movement, the genre chronicling the aristocracy that was brought to a brutal end with the French revolution.
Producers Tony Krantz and Colin Callender are aboard to work on the show, and are hoping to use the learning experience of making the new Dracula series (itself a co-production of Sky and US channel NBC) to figure out this new period drama.