French novels are popular on television. After The Anomalythe best-seller by Hervé Le Tellier, which will soon be adapted by the director of Song of the Wolf, it’s the turn of another Goncourt prize to be offered a transposition on the small screen, and not by just anyone. The prestigious American encrypted channel HBO announced that it has finalized a deal with production company Legendary Entertainment to “develop and co-produce a series based on the book by Leila Slimani Soft song“.
Winner of a Prix Goncourt in 2016 and sold over a million copies worldwide, Soft song recounts the murder of two young children by their nanny and the discovery of the crime by their mother. The story is a long analepsis which returns to what pushed this loving but strange nanny to commit the irreparable. The novel is inspired by a real tragedy, the Yoselyn Ortega affair, which took place in New York in 2012.
In The Perfect Nanny, Nicole Kidman is set to star, alongside American actress Maya Erskine, with whom she is teaming up as co-executive producers. It’s not the first time that Soft song is subject to adaptation. In 2019, director Lucie Borleteau had already transposed the book into a film carried by Karin Viard, Leila Bekhti and Antoine Reinartz. The feature film had gathered just over 200,000 spectators in theaters.
Source- https://www.gqmagazine.fr/pop-culture/article/un-celebre-roman-francais-prix-goncourt-va-etre-adapte-en-serie-par-hbo-avec-nicole-kidman