Never Let Me Go, the 2005 novel by Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, is being turned into a television series. The project was reported in development at FX in May 2022, written by Melissa Iqbal, a writer on the HBO series The Nevers.
The series is being produced by DNA Films, the company behind the 2010 film version, together with Searchlight Television. Iqbal is an executive producer alongside Allon Reich and Andrew Macdonald of DNA Films.
The story
The novel follows Kathy, Ruth and Tommy, who grow up together at Hailsham, an apparently idyllic boarding school in the English countryside where the teachers keep telling the pupils how special they are. Years later Kathy looks back on their friendship and slowly reveals the truth about what the children were being raised for.
The book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2005 and is one of Ishiguro’s best-known works, along with The Remains of the Day. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017.
The film
The 2010 film was directed by Mark Romanek from a screenplay by Alex Garland, and starred Carey Mulligan as Kathy, Andrew Garfield as Tommy and Keira Knightley as Ruth. It was released by Fox Searchlight, whose film business, like FX, became part of Disney after its purchase of 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets in 2019.
A series gives the story more room than a feature film. No casting or release date was announced with the development news.
Sources: FX and Searchlight Television development announcement (May 2022), publishing history of Never Let Me Go.