Netflix India will soon adapt Salman Rushdie’s literary magnum opus Midnight’s Children as a marathon webseries.
Midnight’s Children follows the life of Saleem Sinai, born on the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the time of India’s independence. Commenting on yet another adaptation of his most iconic novel Mr Rushdie said, “I am absolutely delighted that Midnight’s Children will have a new life on Netflix, and greatly look forward to working with them to help create it.”
Why another screen version of Midnight’s Children, I asked Mr Rushdie, and he explained, “Midnight’s Children has had many incarnations. First as a novel, then a play staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, a BBC radio serial, and a film. If anyone wants to make it into a Broadway musical, I’d be interested in that too! A life in one medium, one art form, does not preclude a new life in another.”
Deepa Mehta has already done an admirable adaptation of Midnight’s Children. When I asked Mr Rushdie if Deepa Mehta had any thoughts on the new avatar, he said, “I discussed the Netflix project with Deepa before the announcement, and she was excited, a 100 per cent supportive.”
For many years Midnight’s Children was considered “unfilmable”, but the author never believed so. “Nothing is unfilmable. Good films have been made of Anna Karenina, Ulysses, The Tin Drum, and even Proust. It’s just a question of finding a way, and that’s what we’ve tried to do. There’s no magic trick to it, just hard work.