Usually when a television show contains a giant mystery it’s something that is revealed in the final episode of the season, but for an upcoming Italian series, the mystery might never be solved.  Related: Elena Ferrante: the global literary sensation nobody knows  Italian film and television production company Wildside announced today that it is working with producer Fandango to adapt the Neopolitan novel series by Elena Ferrante. The four novels are about the intense life-long friendship of two women, Lila and Elena, set over 50 years in a changing Italy. The final novel, The Story of the Last Child – published last year – was nominated for Italy’s top literary honor, and was featured on many of the major end of year lists. All of this and the identity of Ferrante, which is a pseudonym, is still unknown. However, Ferrante is involved in the development of the project, but exactly how or to what extent is as unknown as who she really is.  Each of her four novels will be adapted into an eight-episode season for 32 episodes in total. There is no news yet on when and where the series will air and Wildside is still looking for international co-production partners. It’s using a model that is increasingly popular in the television industry where producers and networks from different countries come together to finance and distribute a program, similar to how The Honorable Woman was made by the BBC in the UK and Sundance TV in the US. Wildside is using a similar scheme for its next series The Young Pope (starring Jude Law and Diane Keaton) which they are producing alongside Sky, France’s Canal Plus and HBO.  Related: The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante review – a tragic finale to a triumphant quartet  Fandango, the Italian production company that owns the rights to Ferrante’s novels, is the company behind which adapted Roberto Saviano’s mob drama Gomorrah for Sky. While mafia shows are much more common for the small screen, the story of a female friendship, especially one as intimately rendered as the one central to Ferrante’s novels, is a bit of an oddity although a very welcome one. Considering the commercial and critical success of the four books that are the source material, this will be a closely watched and much-anticipated project, no matter where it ends up.
The writer’s popular books are being adapted by the producers behind Sky’s Gomorrah, with each of the four volumes becoming an eight-episode series