Disney+ will have a new series based on the bestselling ‘Shardlake’ series soon. Justin Chadwick is in talks with Disney+ and The Forge to direct the Shardlake series. Chadwick was the lead director of ‘Becoming Elizabeth’ and has directed ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’, starring Eric Bana, Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson.
The Shardlake series tells the story of Dr. Mathew Shardlake who is a hunchback and lawyer turned detective in the reign of Henry VIII. Sansom plans to write more stories on the character and plans to take Shardlake into the reign of Elizabeth I. In the first novel ‘Dissolution’, Shardlake is appointed by Thomas Cromwell, the Tudor Lord, to investigate the execution of Robin Singleton, a commissioner who was responsible for making monasteries powerless after Henry VIII declaration of supremacy.
There are a total of eight novels written in the series and the first one ‘Dissolution’ came in 2003. The books are written by well known author C.J Samson and are pretty famous. There is a good fan base of the novel series and it is a pretty safe series to work on as well as a very challenging one. But director Justin Chadwick has quite deftness in Tudor storytelling as he has done that before masterfully. The series is titled ‘Shardlake’ and it will most probably comprise four episodes only.
Previously some of the novels of the Shardlake series were adapted by BBC Radio 4 as a part of its 15 minutes drama series. Dissolution was adapted in 2012 as a 10 part radio serial. BBC wanted to make a television adaptation of the novels in 2007 with Kenneth Branagh as the lead, but it did not work out for some reason.