New Sandra Bullock film The Unforgivable has made its way to the number one position on Netflix’s top 10 list over the weekend, with viewers gripped by the thriller’s twists and turns.
The film follows a woman who has just finished serving a long prison sentence for murdering a police officer and is determined to reunite herself with her younger sister – who was adopted by another family following her arrest.
Her mission is made all the more challenging by the fact she’s being pursued by the son of the man she’d shot all those years ago – and so it becomes a race against time to do something before it’s too late.
That story might sound a little familiar, and so you could be wondering if the film has its roots in a real-life case – read on for everything you need to know.
Is The Unforgivable a true story?
No, the film is not based on real events. The reason that it might be familiar is actually rather more straightforward – it is adapted from a three-part ITV drama that originally aired in 2009.
That drama, which was written by Sally Wainwright and starred Suranne Jones in the Sandra Bullock role, was titled Unforgiven – and the new film has presumably been retitled in part to avoid confusion with the classic Clint Eastwood revisionist Western of the same name.
A Hollywood remake had been on the cards for a long time, with Mission: Impossible’s Christopher McQuarrie and The Queen’s Gambit’s Scott Frank among those to have been attached to write and direct at various points during development.
In the end, the screenplay was adapted by Peter Craig, Hillary Seitz and Courtenay Miles, with German filmmaker Nora Fingscheidt in the director’s chair.
It is far from the first time an acclaimed British TV series has been made into an American film – with previous examples including Paul Abbott’s State of Play and Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective.