Filmmaker Siddharth Roy Kapur and American studio Wiip Productions have unveiled plans for an epic series based on author William Dalrymple's novel ‘The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company’.
Roy Kapur Films, behind hit series such as ‘Rocket Boys’ and Oscar-contending films such as ‘Last Film Show’, said it is planning a globally relevant series that will appeal to audiences around the world. BAFTA award winning screenwriter Jeremy Brock, known for his work on movies such as ‘The Last King of Scotland’, has been charged with adapting the book, which charts the rise of the East India Company and how it became the first global corporate power by conquering an entire subcontinent in the 18th century.
Siddharth Roy Kapur said: “Jeremy's expertise in crafting intricate character-driven narratives that are deeply rooted in history and setting them against a huge canvas, makes him the perfect collaborator for this project.
“We look forward to creating a globally relevant series together that will appeal to audiences across geographies, languages and cultures.”
‘The Anarchy’, published in 2019, tells the remarkable story of how the mammoth Mughal empire disintegrated and came to be replaced by the British East India Company – an unregulated private enterprise headquartered thousands of miles away in a small London office just five windows wide. It went on to lay the foundations of the British Empire in India, which lasted for nearly 200 years.
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The series based on the acclaimed book will be mounted as an international co-production between Roy Kapur Films and Wiip Productions and will be produced across the US, UK and India. Dalrymple, an award-winning author and historian and co-director of the annual Jaipur Literature Festival, will be involved in the project as a creative consultant.
