Sarah Phelps to adapt Jackie Collins novel

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Sarah Phelps Seasoned TV scribe Sarah Phelps (pictured) is to adapt and executive produce Jackie Collins’ Lovers & Gamblers. 
 

The series comes from FederationUK, the newly-established UK branch of French production company Federation Entertainment. Polly Williams and Arielle Gottlieb also executive produce for FederationUK; it is co-produced with eOne. 
 

First published in 1977, Lovers & Gamblers is set against a backdrop of greed, success and fame, and centres on Al King, a rock-and-roll superstud and Dallas, a beauty queen with a sordid secret. 
 

Phelps said: “Lovers & Gamblers is a searing scabrous masterpiece. It tells a  story of roadside zoos, cults, beauty pageants, poverty and exploitation, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Jackie Collins was ahead of her time, her unflinching eye trained mercilessly on the filthy machinations of politics and power and how the seeds are sown for our own post-truth chaos. 
 

“Lovers & Gamblers is about flawed, damaged people who will do anything, absolutely anything to get to the top and asks what the hell happens to you once you’ve got there. It’s dark, it’s shocking, it is brutally, savagely funny but ultimately, it’s a story about redemption and love.”


Williams and Gottlieb added: “We both devoured Jackie Collins’s books when we were young women, so when Sarah Phelps told us Lovers & Gamblers was one of her favourite novels, the idea of bringing these two extraordinary female creators together was absolutely thrilling. It finally feels like it’s the right time for people to take Jackie Collins and women’s popular fiction seriously. 
 

“We can’t wait for Sarah to breathe fresh life into an extraordinary cast of characters and we can’t think of anyone more perfect than Sarah to show the world how smart, perceptive and still relevant Lovers & Gamblers is.”
 

Sarah Phelps image via Jonathan Birch, 2021. 

Jackie Collins image via Jason Merritt - © 2011 Getty Images. 



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