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It was only when the team at Carnival Films decided they would fast forward The Day of the Jackal to the present day that things started getting interesting.
Carnival bosses Gareth Neame and Nigel Marchant had toyed with the idea of remaking Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 historical novel about the fictional assassination of Charles de Gaulle for a few years but had always concluded that the 1973 movie version starring Edward Fox “cannot be bettered so why would you want to remake it,” according to Neame.
“We revere the film enormously but kept talking about [a remake],” he added. “It was such an intriguing, interesting idea and we couldn’t quite let it go.”
So in the midst of the pandemic, Neame and Marchant decided they would instil two obvious points of difference by making The Day of the Jackal into a 10-episode series and setting it in a 21st century milieu, with no mention of the iconic former French President.
“That was the breakthrough for us,” added Downton Abbey exec Neame. “When we thought we could do it as a contemporary series we realized we could unlock something that was really quite different from the original. It made it worth doing.”
Fast forward some years and The Day of the Jackal, which launches tomorrow on Sky and Peacock, stars Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne and No Time to Die star Lashana Lynch as the chameleonic assassin and the talented agent chasing him across the continent. The series is set amid a turbulent geo-political landscape and kicks off with the assassination of a fictitious German politician.
To hand the show a contemporaneous edge, Carnival secured the services of Ronan Bennett, the creator of Channel 4 and Netflix’s Top Boy, who “loved the source material as much as we did” and could “inject the DNA of the Jackal into a contemporary drama,” according to Marchant.
Cat and mouse
Neame added of Bennett: “He’s an extremely learned, well read man, who knew the book and has always had an interest in government agencies, law enforcement and international crime. So he definitely got our vision straight away and was intrigued by the cat and mouse. Ronan is very drawn to characters who don’t speak the truth and are dishonest.”
Jackal’s “cat and mouse” vibe is what drove Marchant, Neame and Bennett forwards. While the show’s new setting may be infused with geopolitical strife and plays out against a backdrop of real-world turmoil (Deadline speaks with Carnival a week before Donald Trump may be re-elected), Carnival took an entertainment-first approach from the get go, and the series is anything but preachy.
“We made the decision not to make this about a contemporary head of government or head of state but to create an imagined character,” added Neame. “It’s not about individual nations or sovereignty or world power. For us it’s an entertainment show with cat and mouse, and we are not making a bigger point than that.”
Exploring the novel over several episodes allowed the team to delve deeper into the assassin’s psyche and pose questions about his villainy, and conversely the villainy of Lynch’s character Bianca. With this in mind, the “meticulous” Redmayne was perfect for the role, according to the execs, and he took to the task including wearing various weighty prosthetics with aplomb.
“As a reader or as the audience you are at times rooting for the Jackal as he pulls the rug from under you,” said Marchant. “We hope you get the same from the TV show. There is a real mirror image between the Jackal and Bianca.”
Furthermore, Oscar-winning Theory of Everything star Redmayne “brought an Englishness” to the role in a similar vein to Fox, while at the same time he is a “global star and we wanted a global hit,” Neame explained.
“A lonely time for independents”
Carnival has form with British stories that resonate globally, having birthed the TV and film versions of Downton Abbey, a show often referred to as the UK’s greatest TV export.
Jackal was shot all across Europe but is funded by Americans and Marchant said the project “felt very much a part of Carnival’s history in taking a British movie and expanding it to make it global.”
Neame stressed that Carnival does so much more than older period shows, pointing to the upcoming Lockerbie: A Search for Truth – featuring “an extraordinary and compelling performance by Colin Firth” – and Sarah Snook-starrer All Her Fault, along with a number of development projects.
Despite the current slowdown, Carnival has remained “fantastically busy” this year, Neame said. He flagged the benefit of being within a wider group in the shape of Universal International Studios, a division of Universal Studio Group that is in the same Comcast stable as Sky and Peacock.
“I would imagine it’s a lonely time for companies who are fully independent right now,” he added. “We have been able to weather the shocks the system has clearly gone through.”
