The story behind The Night Manager 

With a £20m budget and creative team that most film producers can only dream of it’s easy to see why the Susanne Bier-directed drama, produced by the Cornwell brothers’ The Ink Factory, is among the most anticipated projects to screen at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. 

The BBC-AMC co-commission combines acclaimed source material from iconic spy novelist le Carré, Oscar-winning director Bier, a cast including Tom Hiddleston, Elizabeth Debicki, Hugh Laurie, Olivia Coleman and Tom Hollander, and in-demand screenwriter David Farr.

At £3.5m per episode, the six-part series has a bigger budget than any film playing at this year’s Berlin event, and crucially for the broadcaster, it is the first BBC TV adaptation of a le Carré novel in almost 30 years.

In the show, Hiddlestone plays Pine, the night manager of a European hotel who is recruited by intelligence agents to infiltrate an international arms dealer’s network. The series is a fusion of a spy story and organised crime network, in which Pine must himself become a criminal in order to to infiltrate the inner circle of a lethal and amoral gangster.

“It has been a 23-year journey from book to screen,” said Simon Cornwell, who produced the adaptation with Stephen via their London and LA-based production business.

“Soon after the book was published in 1993 it was optioned by Paramount as a feature with Sydney Pollack attached to direct from Robert Towne’s script. That didn’t work. Five years ago Brad Pitt and Plan B Entertainment took it on with Paramount again on board. But that didn’t work either.”

Even The Night Manager star Hugh Laurie tried to option the book for a one-off project when it first came out, keen to cast himself as Pine. “This is a sprawling 500-page book, across different continents, with massive characters who muscle their way off the page,” said Cornwell. “It just didn’t fit into 90 minutes.”

Le Carré helped adapt the novel for the BBC by adding hooks for contemporary audiences. For example, Olivia Colman’s character Burr is in fact a gruff, no-nonsense Yorkshireman in the book. It is the first time a le Carré character has been gender-swapped for screen. 

Film-style financing

US network AMC joined soon after the BBC in a deal facilitated by WME. The Mad Men broadcaster will distribute in North America and a host of international markets.

“We financed the series like an independent film,” said Stephen. “We made chunky presales in Europe and we had tax incentives in Spain and the UK. We committed equity to the project ourselves and Demarest Films joined as a junior equity partner.” 

Other TV projects The Ink Factory has in development include an original hour-long series from Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk author Ben Fountain. Its slate will be bolstered by the arrival of former Ruby Films executive Mona Qureshi and former BBC drama executive Emma Broughton, who have joined as co-heads of development and production in London.

Other additions include former Cross Creek executive Becky Sloviter, who will serve as senior vice president of development and production based in LA, Jane Frazer as head of physical production and former Arts Alliance exec Yogita Puri as head of commercial and business affairs.