The BBC has release yet another glimpse of the impressive costumes that are going to be a big part of its adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s classic masterpiece, War And Peace. You can see the new shot above (Image credit: BBC/Mitch Jenkins/Kaia Zak), featuring Lily James, Paul Dano (left) and James Norton (right) looking very dramatic in front of a storm swept grey sky with the terror of the 19th century battles between France and Russia as part of the Napoleonic Wars going on behind them.
It follows the two images below that accompanied the announcement of the adaptation, which feature Lily James (Pride And Prejudice And Zombies) making her way out of a coach in the snowy Russian winter, and James Norton doing a pretty good job of looking pensive and war-like at the head of the Russian army. The BBC 1 adaptation has been confirmed to begin to air in January 2016, so we’re expecting a fair few more shots to surface before the first episode of the six-part mini-series begins.
For anyone that hasn’t read the book, or seen how formidable it is in size and scale, you should expect something significantly epic from the production. Written by Russian author, Leo Tolstoy, and published in 1869 the book stacked up at a sturdy 1,225 pages in its first published edition, so the BBC will have its work cut out for itself in attempting to bring it to life in just six episodes.
There are four main volumes to the sprawling story of life in Russia during the tumultuous period of the French invasion, along with a two-part epilogue, so it makes sense to break it up into six episodes. However, with so many characters, evolving story arcs and sequences of events to cover it’s still going to be difficult for the BBC to make it all fit well.
The story focuses on the lives of five aristocratic Russian families as Napoleon and his massive war machine sweeps over the Russian border in a bid to add to its growing list of conquered nations. It’s still a very personal story though, about families, friends and philosophy as much about the many battles that ravaged the country, so if you don’t like war or horses there will still be the drama of the numerous relationships to become engrossed in.
The BBC has already announced a massive ensemble cast for the mini-series and you can find out more about the BBC adaptation of War And Peace to see all of the names involved in the production. Lily James will be playing Natasha Rostova, James Norton will star as Prince Andrei Bolkonsky and Paul Dano (12 Years A Slave) plays Pierre Bezukhov.
We’re also expecting a trailer to be released in the build up to the air date, so we’ll update with more images and the trailer when they become available.
