Graham Greene, the British author and critic behind classic novels like The End of the Affair and The Power and the Glory, is quietly enjoying a bit of a screen renaissance. We're eagerly awaiting Rowan Joffe's new version of Brighton Rock, starring John Hurt, Helen Mirren and Sam Riley. And now Deadline have announced that a new version of The Fallen Idol is in the works, with a screenplay by David Farr.
Greene for a while separated his own novels into "literary" fiction and what he called his "entertainments". The Fallen Idol was neither (although it was both literary and entertaining), stemming from his 1936 short story The Basement Room. Greene himself wrote the screenplay for the 1948 film version, starring Ralph Richardson and directed by Carol Reed. Reed and Greene would collaborate again a year later on The Third Man.
The original Fallen Idol takes place in post-war London. It's the story of six-year-old Philip, the son of a diplomat, whose loss of innocence begins when he catches the family's butler Baines (Richardson, the boy's idol) with a girlfriend. When Baines' wife accidentally falls to her death, the butler is suspected of murdering her, and in trying to keep his affair a secret, both Baines and young Philip make the situation infinitely worse.
Farr's new version (he also wrote Joe Wright's Hanna) will transpose the story to modern-day India, and increase Philip's age from six to eleven. His family will be living in a large colonial mansion, and producer Walter Parkes (currently at work on Men in Black 3) explains that the change in location is intended to make "the world the boy explores outside the house much more alluring and potentially dangerous." The butler will now be caught having an affair with an Indian girl. "We thought that the echoes of the class issues depicted in the original short story and film could resonate in contemporary India,” says Parkes. Might the fact that everybody liked **Slumdog Millionaire **also be a small consideration?
The film is being developed with Studio Canal, and Parkes and Farr intend to have everything - director, cast, budget - in place before shopping the project to potential financiers. It's a process designed to make getting a green light as painless as possible. “This kind of adult drama is an endangered species in Hollywood," says Parkes.