The award-winning 1917 director tells why his Neal Street Production company is adapting John Fowles’s 60s novel for TVA small Greek island, its wooded hills woven with timeless secrets, would make a welcome contrast to the carnage of first world war trenches. But if 1917 director Sir Sam Mendes now has a holiday isle near Athens in his sights, it is as the location of his next project, and not as a sunny destination before he is feted at Bafta and Oscar ceremonies next month.
Mendes and his partners at Neal Street Productions are to make a major television adaptation of The Magus, the mysterious and much-loved novel by John Fowles. “Like many people, I read and loved it as a teenager,” Mendes said this weekend, as he unveiled his latest plans to the Observer.