Taking New Aim at “Jackal”

Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 political thriller, The Day of the Jackal, about an attempted assassination of French President Charles de Gaulle in 1962, already served as the basis for an award-winning 1973 film adaptation. Now it’s set to spawn a TV series starring English actor Eddie Redmayne (The Good Nurse, The Aeronauts).

However, this show’s faithfulness to its source material may be slight. Deadline reports that Forsyth’s intrigue-charged yarn is being “reimagined as a contemporary story set amidst the current turbulent geo-political landscape and will delve deeper into the chameleon-like ‘anti-hero’.” That sounds as if the folks behind this drama, which is destined for the NBC-TV streaming service Peacock in the States, and Sky in the UK and Europe, hope to draw viewers in based on the original Jackal’s fame, but then deliver something quite different from what fans of the book and movie might expect.

How many times have we watched these same bait-and-switch games played before? Perhaps TV and movie developers should focus on creating new characters and new stories, rather than trying to wring a few million more dollars out of reboots.