Steve McQueen will adapt the 1980s ITV heist series Widows for a new movie which is expected to be his follow-up to the Oscar-winning Twelve Years a Slave, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The artist and film director plans to transfer the action from the UK to the US, and will likely adopt a new title. Widows, a six-part series first broadcast in 1983 and written by Prime Suspect’s Linda La Plante, was the story of three women who decide to pull off a daring raid despite the knowledge that an earlier effort led to the death of their armed robber husbands. It starred Ann Mitchell, Fiona Hendley and Maureen O’Farrell.
McQueen, said to have enjoyed the ITV show as a teenager, will write the screenplay. The film is being put together by Iain Canning and Emile Sherman, the production team behind another British Oscar-winner, 2010 period drama The King’s Speech.
McQueen revealed this week that he also plans to shoot a film about the black American actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson. The biopic is described as a dream project for the British director, though the Widows adaptation is expected to arrive first on the big screen.
