A new Indian adaptation of John le Carré’s 1993 thriller, The Night Manager, is set to begin filming in Mumbai in April, with famed Indian film actor Hrithik Roshan in the title role, according to Variety.
The novel focuses on Jonathan Pine, a man with a military background and connections to British Intelligence who, as the story opens, is working as the night manager at a hotel in Zurich. After he makes a mistake that results in an acquaintance’s death, he ends up taking part in a complex undercover operation to bring down that person’s killer: a monstrous international criminal, Richard Roper, who deals in illegal arms and drugs.
Le Carré’s book was previously adapted as a 2016 miniseries starring Avengers: Endgame’s Tom Hiddleston as Pine and House’s Hugh Laurie as Roper, which aired on BBC One in the United Kingdom and AMC in the United States. Its director, Susanne Bier, won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special.
The new production will be the first le Carré adaptation to begin filming since the author, whose real name was David Cornwell, died in December at the age of 89. Many of his books, including 1963’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, which received a Kirkus Star, and 2001’s The Constant Gardener, have been made into film or TV projects. Recent adaptations include a 2018 BBC/AMC miniseries based on the 1983 novel The Little Drummer Girl, starring Little Women’s Florence Pugh, and a 2016 film of the Kirkus-starred 2010 thriller, Our Kind of Traitor, featuring Ewan McGregor.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
