Jonathan Franzen's Purity Heading to Television

Posted on February 17, 2016

Producer Scott Rudin is adapting Jonanthan Franzen's Purity into a drama series for television. The screenplay is being written by Todd Field and Jonathan Franzen. Field is set to direct. Deadline reports that Daniel Craig is attached to star in the project.

Purity does not have a home yet, but has been pitched to Showtime, Netflix, Hulu and Amazon.The show is supposed to be a limited series, with around 20 episodes, but it could go beyond the original run. Deadline says that the project was originally envisioned as a feature film.

The story is a dark comedy about a young woman named Pip Tyler, who does not know who her father is. She knows her real name is Purity. She is stuck with a lot of student debt. She lands an internship with Andreas Wolf, a charismatic German business man who is an information broker living in Bolivia. Daniel Craig is supposed to play Andreas. Given the fact that he has not signed on for another Bond film yet, this news has some people speculating that Craig is quitting the Bond franchise for good.

It will be interesting to see where this project lands. There was a much discussed project to bring Franzen's The Corrections to HBO, but it never came to fruition. This project seems like its a better fit.