screenplays

adaptations of novels and plays

Lost Illusions by Balzac 6 x 1 hour episodes for TV or streaming. A young, extremely handsome, aspiring poet,Lucien, becomes infatuated with a beautiful, educated married woman, Madame de Bargeton, who returns his love. Their passion, nurtured in the provincial town of Angouleme, turns to disillusionment on arrival in Paris. They both strive to follow the beau monde in sophistication, but descend into cynicism and despair. The chasm between illusion and reality is cruelly exposed. Read longer synopsis or excerpt from the script.

A Confederacy of Dunces by J K Toole 12 x 35 minute episodes for TV or streaming Paramount hold film and TV rights. Hilarious tragi-comedy of the life of Ignatius P Reilly, an obese, unemployed fat-head with an affinity for medieval philosophy, living in New Orleans with his exasperated and long-suffering mother who finally insists he find work. Ignatius does so but is motivated throughout by wanting to upstage his erstwhile university girl-friend, Myrna Minkoff, a New Yorker, who, like Ignatius, goes from one crack-pot exploit to the next. As his mother plots to have him committed to an asylum, he is saved in the nick of time by the feisty Myrna.

The Vatican Cellars by Andre Gide 90 minute film is in development. A darkly comic imbroglio involving murder, seduction and an alleged abduction of the Pope and his replacement by an atheist imposter. The enigmatic anti-hero, Lafcadio, commits a seemingly motiveless crime when he throws an elderly gent on a mission to secure the Pope’s release, from a moving train. Read longer synopsis or excerpt from the script.

get in touch at screenplays@lafcadio.co.uk