Netflix Starts Shoot of Ambitious Italian Original ‘The Leopard’ With Deva Cassel in Role Played by Claudia Cardinale in 1963 Original – First Images
Shooting has kicked off in Rome on limited series “The Leopard” based on the classic Sicily-set novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa that marks Netflix’s most ambitious Italian original to date.
Production on the lavish period piece will take place in the Sicilian cities of Palermo, Syracuse, Catania as well as the Italian capital over the next four months.
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The historical tapestry with elements comparable to “Downton Abbey” or “The Crown,” and potential to make a global mark, is a modern take on the sensual Sicilian saga famously adapted into a film by Luchino Visconti starring Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon and Burt Lancaster. The film, now an Italian cinema classic, won the 1963 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
The six-episode epic set against the backdrop of social revolution in 1860s Sicily will star top model Deva Cassell – who is Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel’s daughter – as Angelica Sedara, the young stunning middle class woman who becomes a catalyst of social disruption and was played by Claudia Cardinale in the original. It’s a big breakout role for Deva Cassel who recently made her acting debut in Laura Luchetti’s upcoming “The Beautiful Summer.”
Italy’s Kim Rossi Stewart (“Romanzo Criminale”) will play Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, who in the masterpiece movie was played by Burt Lancaster, while Saul Nanni (“Love & Gelato”) has been cast as the prince’s nephew Tancredi Falconeri, played by Alain Delon in the film. Benedetta Porcaroli (“Baby”) will play Concetta, his cousin, who is madly in love with Tancredi.
Other cast members include, Paolo Calabresi, Francesco Colella, Astrid Meloni and Greta Esposito.
“Don Fabrizio is faced with an impossible choice. He has the power to engineer a marriage, between the rich and beautiful Angelica and his nephew Tancredi, that could secure his family’s legacy, but doing so he would break his favorite daughter, Concetta’s heart. The series will be a modern exploration of timeless themes – power, love, and the cost of progress,” says the provided synopsis.
As previously announced, British director Tom Shankland, whose credits include Netflix’s true crime series “The Serpent,” will be the lead director on “The Leopard” series. Shankland, will be joined on set by Italian directors Giuseppe Capotondi and Laura Luchetti who will respectively helm episodes four and five.
“The Leopard” “Talks about this patriarchal man [a 19th-century Sicilian nobleman, the Prince of Salina, caught in the midst of civil war and revolution] but there are also some very complex female characters and we want to depict their point-of-view and struggles that are very pertinent today,” Shankland said when the show was first unveiled. Shankland has also underlined that both “The Leopard” and Sicily played an important part in his childhood, since his father, who was a professor of Italian in the U.K., adored the novel and took the family to visit the island where it is set.
The director of photography is Italy-based Danish cinematographer Nicolaj Bruel (“Dogman”); the costumes are being designed by Carlo Poggioli (“The New Pope”) and Edoardo Russo (“The Hand of God”). The sets are by Dimitri Capuani (“Pinocchio”). The show’s original score is by Paolo Buonvino.
The “Leopard” adaptation is penned by Richard Warlow, who previously worked with Shankland on “The Serpent” and Benji Walters (“Obsession”). Warlow is also executive producer and creator of Netflix’s take on the Italian classic. The series producer is Edoardo Ferretti (“A Discovery of Witches”).
Italy’s expanding Indiana Production shingle is producing “The Leopard” in tandem with Moonage Pictures, the U.K. shingle headed by the producers behind “Peaky Blinders.”
The show is produced by Fabrizio Donvito, Daniel Campos Pavoncelli, Marco Cohen and Benedetto Habib for Indiana Production and by Will Gould, Frith Tiplady and Matthew Read for Moonage Pictures.
See first images from “The Leopard” set here
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