Scott Frank developing new projects with Clive Owen & Anya Taylor-Joy

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

With The Queen's Gambit proving to be an incredibly successful mini-series for Netflix, co-creator, writer, director Scott Frank is busy developing his next projects. While speaking on The Watch podcast, Frank revealed that he has several projects in the works, including one that will reunite him with his Queen's Gambit star Anya Taylor-Joy.

Frank is developing an adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's Laughter in The Dark, which focused on a wealthy art critic named Albert who becomes obsessed with a young woman and aspiring film star by the name of Margot. When Margot reunites with a former lover, the pair scheme to take Albert for everything he's worth. Anya Taylor-Joy is attached to star in the project, which Frank called "a valentine to movies, I'm going to do it as a film noir and a movie within a movie. And it's a really nasty, wonderful, thriller." Sounds like fun. Additionally, Frank is also working on a Sam Spade TV series with Clive Owen. The project would explore an older version of the character, best known as the protagonist of The Maltese Falcon. "What if you do Sam Spade later in life and he’s 60s years old?" said Frank. "He’s now an ex-pat living in the South of France. His past comes to his past and finds him in this small town. It’s going to be a six-episode series with Clive Owen."

Getting back to The Queen's Gambit, the series quickly became Netflix's biggest limited scripted series to date. "Three years ago when Scott Frank (Godless) first approached us about adapting The Queen’s Gambit – Walter Tevis’ 1983 book about a young chess prodigy – we felt it was a compelling tale," said Netflix's VP of Original Series Peter Friedlander. "Beth is an underdog who faces addiction, loss, and abandonment. Her success – against the odds- speaks to the importance of perseverance, family, and finding, and staying true to, yourself. However, I don’t think any of us could have predicted that The Queen’s Gambit – and the extraordinary Anya Taylor-Joy – would become the global phenomena they are today or our biggest limited scripted series ever." You can check out a glowing review of The Queen's Gambit from our own Alex Maidy right here.