EXCLUSIVE: Jackie Collins’ 10-novel series based based around mob daughter Lucky Santangelo is headed for the big screen. Universal Pictures has acquired the book series, which will be produced by Monumental Pictures partners Debra Hayward & Alison Owen, and Working Title partners Tim Bevan & Eric Fellner. Moira Buffini, whose credits include the Cary Fukanaga-directed Jane Eyre and the Stephen Frears-directed Tamara Drewe, will adapt the novels. The hope is to make a trilogy based on the books. Working Title US President Liza Chasin will also executive produce the series.
Lucky Santangelo is one of the best known characters hatched by the author, who died in 2015. Collins’ three daughters, Tiffany Lerman Sacks, Rory Green and Tracy Lerman, will serve as executive producers. Santangelo is the gorgeous daughter of Italian American gangster, Gino, patriarch of a crime family that originated in the 1920s. Owens and Hayward courted Collins’ daughters, and the Monumental duo brought the project to Working Title and Universal.
“We are reclaiming Jackie Collins for a new generation of women,” Owen said. “Lucky has none of the neuroses or angst of modern day literary heroines. She is her own woman.”
Said Collins’ daughters in a statement: “We are thrilled to be bringing our mother’s most iconic and dynamic character to the big screen. With Alison and Debra’s track record of female driven stories, we consider them to be the perfect producers, and now to be the perfect time for a kick ass female heroine to take center stage in Hollywood.”
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