Sky scripted exec Meghan Lyvers has addressed a question some people have been asking over the recent “The Day of the Jackal” reboot, starring Eddie Redmayne, namely whether it needed to be a reboot at all given the departure from the source material.
“The Day of the Jackal” was first published as a novel in 1971 by Frederick Forsyth and adapted as a feature two years later, with Edward Fox playing cold-blooded assassin The Jackal.
Redmayne’s 10-episode version, which was written by Ronan Bennett, debuted last month on Sky in the U.K. and Peacock in the U.S. It has already been renewed for a second season.
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“It’s an interesting one,” said Lyvers, who is executive director of original scripted television and film at the Comcast-owned media company. “The IP [intellectual property] was in the Universal family,” she explained, adding that the book has always been a “touchpoint for filmmakers” embarking on any kind of “big thriller, espionage type of film.”
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“So do you need it? I think it’s always helpful, because it gives writers a spine and a playbook,” she added. “But the challenge of any IP is if you’re going to adapt it, it better be great, one, and two, it needs to stand on its own. So if you remove the IP, if you remove the title, and you read this character, and you understood the journey that that character is going to go on, and what that invitation is to the audience, it would have to stand on its own two feet.”
“The big thing for us in terms of the tentpole series that we do, which are often based on IP, they have to be equally as compelling as the IP. It’s almost more of an uphill challenge and task, but it does give you a playbook in some aspects. So when Eddie talks about the way he prepared for that character, the physicality, the technicality of the trade, and the operational aspects of that that was in the book, and that was wonderful, and that gave him a real rooting place to go from in terms of building that character. And for Ronan Bennett, who crafted that story.”
Lyvers also revealed that because of the time it takes to make high-end drama, the second season was “intentionally picked up…early with Peacock and with Universal because we know it takes a long time to bring that back in the same quality that the audiences are going to expect.”
Lyvers, who was speaking at television conference Content London, was joined on the Sky panel alongside the conglomerate’s executive director of content strategy Jamie Morris and executive director for unscripted Phil Edgar-Jones. The trio emphasized that despite the economic downturn, which has resulted in shrinking commissions across the television industry, Sky are not slowing down their commissioning.
“It is business as usual for us, our investment has not changed,” said Lyvers. “We are continuing to build on originals for scripted and that’s a wonderful position to be in and we know we’re very fortunate, but it does mean that we’re making very tough choices.”
Edgar-Jones said: “We absolutely recognize what a tough time it is for the independent production community. From our point of view, we’ve kind of commissioned at the same level that we always have. We never commissioned as some massive volume and so we’ve kept steady across this last couple of years….But we’re certainly not slowing down at the moment, if anything we’ve got busier.”
