Yahoo Movies Richard Osman confirms a Thursday Murder Club theatre production is in the works
Richard Osman has confirmed a theatre production based on his best-selling book series The Thursday Murder Club is in the works.
The novels from the Pointless and House of Games host follow the story of four residents in a retirement home who regularly gather to solve murders for fun – until they find themselves at the heart of a real-life slaying and must get to the bottom of the mystery.
After a Netflix film adaptation was announced, Osman has shared that we could also see the crime-solving pensioners hit the boards.
Speaking on his The Rest Is Entertainment podcast with Inside No. 9's Marina Hyde, the TV star revealed that work has begun on a theatre adaptation.
Related: Richard Osman reveals addiction he's battled since childhood
Talking about the challenges and technical elements needed to pull off the transformation from book to theatre, he said: "The adaptation has to go through the lens of being in the theatre. Lots of small things, it has to be an hour first half, there has to be an interval because that's how theatre pays for things and then there has to be a shorter second half. But that's not a million miles different from a movie. It's very different to a book."
He continued: "But I think, by and large, when you adapt something to a different medium the technical thing is interesting, but there's a million great theatre producers and I'm doing The Thursday Murder Club adaptation with a brilliant writer called Tom Basden. So you have people who know what they're doing and directors who know what they're doing."
He went on to explain that the project is in its very early stages as work on the Steven Spielberg film continues, starring Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie.
Related: Richard Osman confirms The Thursday Murder Club cast
"It's interesting on The Thursday Murder Club on the contract thing, because we're doing the movie with Amblin, which is Steven Spielberg's company, and then we started talking about doing a theatre adaptation a bit after that," he added.
"If you buy the movie rights you have certain other rights as well and so they were saying, 'Look, if you are going to do a theatre production, then I'm afraid we're going to have to put our foot down and say that Amblin and Steven Spielberg have to be involved.' And we were like, 'Yeah, that's okay! Listen, we're not going to play hardball, if Steven Spielberg wants to put some money into it, he is very very welcome!'
"So that's at very early stages, me and Tom are just sitting down and talking about it and thinking about it at the moment. More on that sort of next year I suspect."
With a date for the film adaptation yet to be announced, however, it could be a long wait before you can catch the theatre show.
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