‘Cinema Paradiso’ will become a series with Giuseppe Tornatore as director

Toto’s story is preparing to make the leap from the big screen to the small screen. As reported by Variety, Giuseppe Tornatore, director of ‘Cinema Paradiso’, is preparing a six-part miniseries based on his film. Tornatore will write and direct it, and he doesn’t want to waste time: his idea is to shoot it as soon as possible and release it next year.

It has not yet been announced where we will see it, but Giuseppe Tornatore and producer Marco Belardi would already be “in advanced negotiations” with a North American streaming platform to be the home of this new version of ‘Cinema Paradiso’. They’re still negotiating (they’re in the US right now working on it), so nothing is certain yet. Belardi and his company, Bamboo Productions (not to be confused with Spain’s Bambú Producciones), have big plans for this new life they want to give the film and would like to prepare a documentary on the history and legacy of the 1988 classic that took the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

What will the series be about?

But what can they want to tell us that justifies the existence of another ‘Cinema Paradiso’? Tornatore’s idea is that the series tells the same story as the film but taking advantage of the format to expand “different narrative threads”, explains the producer, who gives as an example the possibility of investigating the past of the inhabitants of Giancaldo, the town in which the protagonist grew up. They would also portray in a little more detail the generation of Italians marked by the Second World War and their spirit of “restart” in the postwar period, where the Seventh Art was very important. The basis of the series, however, would continue to be “the strength of a mother, the solidarity of a friend, sex as a cover, the forced relocations, the escapes and the marked social differences”.

‘Cinema Paradiso’ follows a film director who returns to his hometown in Sicily after receiving the news that an old friend has passed away. The film shows us the childhood of the protagonist, marked by the friendship he forges with the projectionist of the town cinema, who instills in him a love for movies. It is a cult feature film that exudes love for celluloid in each of its scenes. The film is available for streaming on HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video, Filmin and Acontra+.