Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth is headed to the small screen, Deadline reports.
Keefe’s book, which is slated for publication Tuesday by Doubleday, tells the true story of Zac Brettler, a 19-year-old London man who posed as the son of a Russian oligarch and jumped to his death from the balcony of a luxury tower in 2019. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the book “an exemplary account of naïveté, wealth, and menace, impeccably told by a top-notch journalist.”
The production company A24 UK is developing the book as a limited series. The New York Times reports that Keefe will be an executive producer for the series.
Keefe’s work has been adapted for the screen before. His 2017 New Yorker article “The Family That Built the Empire of Pain” (expand into the 2021 book Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty) formed the basis for the 2023 Netflix limited series Painkiller, starring Uzo Aduba and Matthew Broderick. His 2019 book, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, was adapted into a 2024 limited series starring Lola Petticrew and Hazel Doupe that streamed on FX on Hulu. A24 is also developing a television adaptation of Keefe’s 2009 book, The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
