Lily James & Gillian Anderson set for new War & Peace TV epic
Cinderella star Lily James and Gillian Anderson have signed on to bring author Leo Tolstoy's classic novel War & Peace to the small screen.
The actresses will join James Norton, Paul Dano and Jim Broadbent in the new The Weinstein Co. and BBC mini-series.
Tolstoy's epic 1869 novel is regarded as one of the most
influential pieces of literature. It follows the fortunes and
misfortunes of five Russian aristocratic families following the
French invasion.
Previous attempts to adapt War & Peace for TV have included a BBC
series in the early 1970s, which featured Anthony Hopkins, and a
2007 production, starring Malcolm MacDowell, Clemence Poesy and
Alessio Boni.
The book has also been adapted for the big screen in films
featuring Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda (1956) and Sergey
Bondarchuk, Lyudmila Saveleva and Vyacheslav Tikhonov a decade
later.