The Ink Factory’s Stephen and Simon Cornwell have major TV and film adaptations of their late father John le Carré’s works on the go, keeping the spy master novelist front and centre of the genre.
George Smiley, arguably the UK’s most famous spy figure after 007, is soon to return to the screen in a major way.
The Ink Factory, the London and Los Angeles-based production company founded in 2010 by Stephen and Simon Cornwell, is expected to go into production next year on a long-gestating TV series adaptation of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, one of the classic novels by their late father John le Carré.
Smiley features only briefly but it is just the first part in Legacy Of Spies, a cycle that will encompass several of the intelligence officer’s stories. (The moniker comes from le Carré’s 2017 novel, dealing with the characters from his earlier Smiley fiction.) Matthew Macfadyen is attached to play the spy, previously portrayed in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by Alec Guinness (in the 1979 miniseries) and Gary Oldman (2011’s film adaptation).
The project is being hatched in partnership with Fifth Season, which has a minority stake in The Ink Factory, with a broadcast partner expected to be announced soon. The Cornwell brothers describe it as “the start of a great journey, which will travel for a good few seasons through the Smiley books. The masterplan is to keep going for six years.”
In the works
Stephen Cornwell has written the scripts and is showrunning The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, which was made into a feature in 1965 starring Richard Burton. Le Carré died in 2020 but Stephen suggests the work is as relevant as ever.
The Ink Factory, with around 20 members of staff, has plenty of other new film and TV projects on the slate, including the second season of The Night Manager, which will be available in early January to UK viewers on the BBC and its iPlayer streaming service, and on Prime Video for international viewers. A third season is in the works.
On the film side, there are at least three feature adaptations of the author’s novels in active development. “We are probably doing more adaptations of our dad’s books than when we first started the company. It’s an odd thing to say but we are progressively uncovering the richness of his legacy,” says Simon Cornwell, CEO and co-founder of the company. “You could characterise our film strategy as the film equivalent of The Night Manager – bigger, bolder, slightly faster-paced adaptations or retellings of our dad’s stories.”
“[He] wrote 27 or 28 novels, which we are munching our way through,” adds Stephen.
Although the UK remains the “hub” of The Ink Factory’s activities, the company is venturing into non-English-language storytelling. Its 2023 Hindi-language version of The Night Manager was a significant hit for Disney in India. Plans are afoot for TV versions of le Carré’s 2008 novel A Most Wanted Man, which was originally adapted as a 2014 feature starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, in both Germany and South Korea.
The brothers estimate “less than 20% of our revenues come from the UK”, suggesting a commercial as well as creative reason behind the growing international strategy – not least to hedge against what the brothers call “a tricky market in the UK”.
Comic timing
Another departure is a first graphic novel – John le Carré’s: The Circus Losing Control written by Matt Kindt and illustrated by Ibrahim Moustafa – which Dark Horse Comics is publishing this month. Meanwhile, a third sibling, Nicholas Cornwell, who writes under the name Nick Harkaway, last year published George Smiley ‘continuation’ novel Karla’s Choice and is at work on two further books – all of which are in the frame for future screen adaptations.
Stephen Cornwell talks passionately of the company’s commitment to bringing the le Carré stories into the contemporary world. The Night Manager, for example, was moved into the present day for its TV version. In the Legacy Of Spies cycle, the intention is to ask: “What would the world of George Smiley, the world of the Circus [as MI6 is nicknamed] look like in the present day?”
It is a testament to the enduring power of le Carré’s spy fiction that so many films and TV dramas influenced by him are being hatched. These include James Marsh’s ITVX series Secret Service, made by Potboiler Productions and adapted from a Tom Bradby novel; Eric Rochant’s hit French series The Bureau; and Apple TV’s Slow Horses, taken from the Mick Herron novels and now in post on its sixth season.
“In some ways, it’s the secret of our dad’s success. Espionage is a powerful metaphor for things that go on in real life – love and betrayal being at the centre of that,” reflects Simon on the popularity of a genre in which le Carré remains the pre-eminent figure. “People keep ordering spy shows. The challenge for us is to find things that are fresh and exciting, and to extend the genre.”
Alongside the le Carré adaptations, The Ink Factory is working with other filmmakers, including Oscar winner Ang Lee, with whom they collaborated on Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016). Their new project is Old Gold Mountain, a revisionist history of the 19th-century Gold Rush told through the eyes of two Chinese American girls which is an adaptation of C Pam Zhang’s 2020 novel How Much Of These Hills Is Gold.
The hope is to shoot next summer from a script by Korean American screenwriter Chang-rae Lee.
The company is also teaming with Marc Platt Productions and producers Malte Grunert and Edward Berger on Break, with Daniel Brühl directing a story about German tennis champion Gottfried von Cramm.
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