Showtime’s Best Series Has Just Been Saved
The Talented Mr. Ripley series is moving from Showtime to Netflix.
Showtime is set to merge with Paramount+, and that merger has left some of the upcoming shows canceled completely. However, one of the shows that was meant to be canceled will find new life on Netflix. The Talented Mr. Ripley series, aptly titled Ripley, is moving to Netflix.
The Talented Mr. Ripley moving to Netflix is certainly good news, as the series was first announced back in 2019. We would imagine that the production for said series was halted by the pandemic in 2020, and suffered the delays that most productions did around that time. Showtime is also meant to focus more on its Dexter and Billions franchises, which is why they were so quick to let this budding story head over to Netflix.
The Talented Mr. Ripley series, now on Netflix, will star Andrew Scott in the titular role. Scott most famously appeared in 1917, Spectre, and His Dark Materials. Scott is set to be joined by Dakota Fanning, who will take on the role of Marge, and Dickie Greenleaf will be portrayed by Johnny Flynn.
The Talented Mr. Ripley is based on the novels written by Patricia Highsmith and focuses on a con man in the 1960s, who is tasked with heading to Italy to retrieve a rich man’s son, Dickie. When Tom Ripley meets Dickie, he pretends to know him, though the pair have never met. Marge, on the other hand, suspects that Tom is not who he says he is and is up to something.
This is not the first adaptation of these novels, as a Talented Mr. Ripley movie was made back in 1999. The movie saw Matt Damon take on the role of Mr. Ripley, Jude Law as Dickie, and Gwyneth Paltrow as Marge. The movie currently holds an 85% “certified fresh” critic rating, with an equally impressive 80% audience approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
It will be quite interesting to see how this Talented Mr. Ripley series pans out on Netflix, but we imagine that the source material is going to be explored deeper, now that the story is being turned into a series. Steven Zaillian is set to take on the role of writer and director for the eight-episode series. Zaillian won an Academy Award for his work on Schindler’s List.
We are not sure when this Talented Mr. Ripley series is going to be made available, but we imagine it’s going to be soon, considering it has been in active production since 2019. Granted, it likely had to pause because of the pandemic in 2020, but there may have been a lot of the groundwork finished by then. Netflix will assuredly let the world know with a trailer when Ripley is far closer to being released.
We are quite excited to see this new adaptation of the Talented Mr. Ripley, and we hope that Scott can appear as devious as Damon once did. It’s also not often that a show that has been canceled on one network is made available on another, or a streaming service for that matter, so Ripley should count itself quite lucky.
