A Little Life is being adapted for the small screen.
Author Hanya Yanagihara used the book’s official Facebook page to announce on Tuesday that the best-seller and National Book Award finalist has been optioned by Scott Rudin and theater director Joe Mantello with the goal of producing a limited series. A network or streaming service has not yet been attached.
Published in 2015, the novel is an emotional story of four classmates from a small Massachusetts college who move to New York: aspiring actor Willem; painter JB; architect Malcolm; and the withdrawn Jude. The book follows their emotional and often heartbreaking journeys — that include sexual abuse, drug addiction and more — over decades. The Atlantic called the title the “great gay novel.”
For Rudin, should the project find a home it would mark his latest TV foray following Showtime’s Daniel Craig starrer Purity and HBO’s The Night Of and The Newsroom, among others. On the film side, his credits include The Social Network, There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men.
Mantello’s theater directing credits include Wicked, The Humans, Blackbird, Assassins and more.
