The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company to be adapted by WIIP and Roy Kapur Films!
Global independent studio WIIP and premier Indian production company, Roy Kapur Films (RKF), have set acclaimed screenwriter Jeremy Brock (“The Last King of Scotland,” “Her Majesty Mrs. Brown”) to adapt The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by celebrated author and historian #WilliamDalrymple into a premium series.
Executive producers on the project include wiip’s Paul Lee (“Mare of Easttown”), Roy Kapur Films’ Siddharth Roy Kapur (“Dangal”) and XPat Productions’ Naz Haider. Dalrymple will serve as a creative consultant.
Jeremy Brock is a Writer, Director, and Producer, best known for his work on “Her Majesty Mrs. Brown” (1998) “The Last King of Scotland” (2006), “Driving Lessons” (2007), and “How I Live Now” (2013). In 2007, Brock won BAFTA’s Alexander KordaAward for Best British Film, the BAFTA Film Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and the BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Screenplay – all for “The Last King of Scotland.” With a career spanning over two decades, Brock, a member of both the American and British Academies, has earned a reputation for creating intricate and nuanced character-driven stories that are rooted in history and social commentary.
The Anarchy will be mounted as an international co-production between wiip and Roy Kapur Films to be produced across the U.S., U.K. and India. The book tells the remarkable story of how one of the world’s most magnificent empires, the Mughal empire, disintegrated and came to be replaced by the British East India Company – a dangerously unregulated private company-basedthousands of miles away in a small London office just five windows wide.
Producer Siddharth Roy Kapur said,”We are delighted to announce that we have brought on board the acclaimed BAFTA award winning screenwriter Jeremy Brock, to adapt William Dalrymple’s global bestseller The Anarchy into a premium series. Jeremy’s expertise in crafting intricate character-driven narratives that are deeply rooted in history and setting them against a huge canvas, makes him the perfect collaborator for this project. We look forward to creating a globally relevant series together that will appeal to audiences across geographies, languages and cultures.”
The best-selling historical book won accolades as President Barack Obama’s top ten recommended books, and one of The Wall Street Journal’s Best Books of the Year when it came out in 2019. It was also the recipient of the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for the longlist, was the #1 Best Seller in India on Amazon and has been favorably reviewed in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books and NPR.
Brock is represented by Charlotte Knight at Knight Hall AgencyLtd.