Hey guys, Jana here,
The Weinstein Co. is partnering with Gary Oldman and Douglas Urbanski’s Flying Studios to bring Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’ to television. TWC picked up the TV rights and have brought Kevin Hood (‘Becoming Jane‘) in to write the script.
‘In Cold Blood‘ is largely hailed as the original non-fiction novel and it tells the true story of the 1959 murders of a Kansas farming family, Herbert Clutter, his wife and two of their four children. Capote (‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s‘) learned of the crime and before the killers were captured, he and his friend, Harper Lee, acting as an assistant of sorts traveled to Kansas to write about the atrocity. Fellow author Harper Lee (‘To Kill a Mockingbird‘) assisted Capote in interviewing the local residents, the investigators assigned to the case and had thousands of pages of notes covering the abomination. The killers were arrested six weeks after the murders, and Capote began interviewing Richard “Dick” Hickock and Perry Smith to find a motive and to find out what exactly happened that night. Following their research, Capote then took six years to write the book which began as a four-part serial in The New Yorker then published in 1966. It became the second biggest selling true crime book in publishing history, following Vincent Bugliosi’s story of the Manson murders with ‘Helter Skelter‘.
The novel was adapted to the big screen in 1967, then became a two-part TV movie in 1996. Capote’s journey in writing the tome provided the setting for the 2005 film ‘Capote‘ which Philip Seymour Hoffman won a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the titular author. ‘Capote‘ is moving, emotional, and raw. The feelings that Hoffman taps into as Capote are visceral. In the film, we see Capote becoming very close with Perry Smith played by Clifton Collins Jr., and it’s a testament to the dynamic that Hoffman and Collins created on-screen, where you feel the gut-churning agony when Smith is executed in the movie. In my eyes, the bar is set crazy-high for this topic and I’m unsure if a mini-series can do it justice.
“Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood has been riveting audiences since it first hit the literary scene almost 50 years ago, and it continues to have that same thrilling, timeless appeal today,” TWC’s David Glasser said in a statement. “We are extremely excited to be partnering with Gary, Doug and the whole Flying Studios team to bring what’s sure to be an unbelievable series to TV viewers.”