Australian actor Jacob Elordi is set to play the lead role in a limited-series adaptation of Richard Flanagan’s novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Flanagan’s novel, published in the U.S. by Knopf in 2014, follows Dorrigo Evans, an Australian doctor who served time in a prisoner-of-war camp in Thailand and Burma during World War II. The novel won the Booker Prize, but a critic for Kirkus wasn’t impressed, writing that “the novel’s deep flaw is a pivotal plot development that aims at the literary heights of Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary but sounds too often like a swoon-worthy bodice ripper.”
Elordi will play Dorrigo in the series. The actor is known for his roles in the HBO show Euphoria and the Netflix film series The Kissing Booth. He also acted in the 2022 film adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Deep Water and will play Elvis Presley in Priscilla, the upcoming Sofia Coppola film based on Priscilla Presley’s memoir, Elvis and Me.
Writing the series is Shaun Grant (True History of the Kelly Gang), with Justin Kurzel (Assassin’s Creed) attached to direct.
Kurzel praised Elordi, telling the Reporter, “It is great for Shaun and I to be collaborating with a talented actor like Jacob. The Narrow Road to the Deep North needs a powerful leading presence, and it feels like this young actor and this extraordinary book have met each other at the right time.”
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
