Why do you decide to make a television series from a successful film? Good question. The reasons can be editorial, productive, stylistic, if not even autobiographical.
Let’s analyze three Italian TV series born from highly personal feature films and developed during the pandemic: Bangla di Phaim Bhuiyan, At home everyone is fine by Gabriele Muccino e The ignorant fairies by Ferzan Özpetek. They are scheduled respectively on Rai, Sky and Disney +.
Bangla was born from an ironic autobiographical debut in 2019 about a twenty-year-old of Bengali origins rooted in the Roman district of Torpignattara. At home everyone is fine comes in 2018 as a family melodrama in which 70-year-old parents are rich and solid while 40-year-old children are weak and whiners. It is also the return from Hollywood of our Muccino, eager to reflect on the new Italian family. The ignorant fairies by Ferzan Özpetek, when it comes out in 2001, it changes Italian cinema forever.
Three directors and three feature films which then turn into series. One can think that the main reason for this transformation is the need to have more minutes to delve into secondary characters and plots. So it certainly was in the days of Criminal novel, a 2005 film by Michele Placido based on the 662 pages by Giancarlo De Cataldo published in 2002 for Einaudi. That film already has two versions: one of 134 minutes and one of 175. Then comes the now historic original Sky series in 2008. Ben 22 episodes in two seasons (1320 minutes) in which to decline the exploits of the infamous Magliana gang, from 1977 to 1992.
In the case of Gomorrah language is central. Roberto Saviano’s 2006 best-selling essay is incendiary and reveals the Camorra with a new name: system.
The narrator’s ego is omnipresent and infiltrates among clandestine goods, laden with drugs, toxic ones that wander like zombies and sentries in the strongholds of Secondigliano and Scampia. Matteo Garrone’s 2008 masterpiece, on the other hand, chooses nihilism, no narrating self, investigator and moralizer with whom to identify but only crumbling fatalism that becomes almost science fiction. At the Italian box office he collects 10 million euros (47 in the world) by beating the second Batman film by Christopher Nolan.
The Sky series was born in 2014 and ends in 2021, further changing the style compared to book and film, getting closer to Criminal novel as an epic of underworld. In 2019 Sky distributes a film to the cinema that narratively bridges season 4 and the final season 5. Does the television audience go to the cinema? Yup. The immortalthis is the title, collects 6 million euros. Suburra (book 2013, film 2015, series 2017) further shortens the production times between one medium and another. After remembering these basic passages from the past, let’s go back to the present.
In the age of streaming
The recent explosion of streaming platforms like Disney +, Prime Video, and Netflix has added players to the serial production game. Times change but the scheme remains unchanged: from a successful film it is more and more convenient to create a series. Phaim Bhuiyan, a second generation filmmaker with family origins in Bangladesh, has clear ideas. He continues to be the protagonist of the six episodes of 30 minutes each taken from Banglahis 2019 film that tells the sentimental vicissitudes of a boy “50 percent Bangla, 50 percent Italian, 100 percent Torpigna” in homage to the free-range Roman neighborhood where his adventures take place.
“We had decided to do the series even before the victory of the David di Donatello for best newcomer”, Bhuiyan tells us while the eight episodes of Bangla they are aired on Rai3 in prime time until May 6: “Indeed, to be honest it had to come out immediately after the film. The difference is simple. The film is all about my character and his love longings. It is more trivial. In the series, co-directed with Emanuele Scaringi and written by Vanessa Picciarelli, we have decided to continue other stories by addressing issues external to the protagonist. There are the far right and a second generation woman who wears the veil, and more attention is paid to the figure of my girlfriend Asia played by Carlotta Antonelli. I’m distancing myself more and more from Phaim because if it’s me in the film, I see him more as a stranger in the series. This identification between him and me is becoming increasingly heavy even with journalists. In the second season there will be a great revolution ”.
The concept is interesting: a young 26-year-old filmmaker of ours, awarded the most prestigious film award, wants to sever the most obvious connections between him and his alter ego. And he does it starting from a TV series.
As for Gabriele Muccino, the eight episodes of At home everyone is fine for Sky they are a stimulating linguistic revolution. Same system as the film, which grossed 9 million euros in 2018, but with a thriller hint and a thriller ending never explored before by the king of melodrama italic.
It is not pure opportunism, it is more an opportunity to explore new territories
In an interview with Gabriele Niola for BadTaste.it, the Roman director reiterated the experimentation: “The mechanism that guided me is that of Godfather in relation to the character of Michael Corleone. It is the expansion of the black that is inside us and that, as a matter of survival, comes out. This prompted me to think about the second season. In their impulsiveness and neurosis, my characters in the end remain within a perimeter of legality, with a hypocritical facade that always keeps them presentable. I would like to face what goes beyond this line, when it becomes unacceptable to society because something leads us to cross the shadow line ”.
Already the theme song of each episode of At home everyone is fineclearly inspired by a famous sequence of Deep red by Dario Argento, a prelude to the disturbing tone of the series, very different from that of the film.
If Muccino had fun with language, Ferzan Özpetek instead reflected on the passing of time. The ignorant fairiesas a self-contained film, changes Italian cinema when it comes out in 2001. It collects 15 billion old lire (today about 7 million euros) in the year in which Muccino explodes at the box office with The last Kiss e Son’s room by Nanni Moretti brings the prestigious Palme d’Or of the Cannes Film Festival back to Italy 23 years after our last victory with The hoof tree by Ermanno Olmi. Özpetek, and his screenwriter and producer Gianni Romoli, were at the time the first to make a gay-themed box office pop film without farce or speck.
But today? After twenty years what has become The ignorant fairies? Eight episodes for Disney + in which the plot does not change: a married woman, heterosexual and bourgeois, meets the lover (man) of her dead husband and enters into a relationship with the environment of friends of her rival. “The big break with the film is the ending in Turkey,” Özpetek tells us: “I was interested in finishing the series in Istanbul and Disney immediately agreed. We are even thinking of eventually setting the whole second season there. Compared to 2001, I feel that my work is now more international. I have friends who write to me from Japan, England, Spain. I will also go out in America “.
The ending in Turkey is sudden and stimulating, and emphasizes the fetish actress of Özpetek Serra Yılmaz, who becomes for the first time the protagonist of a great love story thwarted by political problems with the Turkish government: “With Gianni Romoli we changed the last episode 15 days before delivering the final draft. It seemed nice for Serra to become the protagonist. The series is not an extension of the film. There is a completely different look compared to 2001 because what matters today is no longer sexuality. We are no longer defined according to it and therefore my two young protagonists can fall in love regardless of whether they are straight or gay ”.
We therefore have three completely different ways to transform a film into a series. A young director in dramaturgical conflict with his symbolic figure of picturesque Italian Bangla and then the two veterans. Muccino, who wants to move from melodrama to thriller, and Özpetek, who from the shock of the clash of old categorizations is moving towards an increasingly fluid analysis of our relationships. In short, this matter of the series from the films does not seem to us historical opportunism. But a historic opportunity for three filmmakers to explore new territories.
This article appeared in issue 25 of the Essential, page 22. Subscribe