Justin Kurzel and Shaun Grant will bring Richard Flanagan’s novel to life on the small screen…

Justin Kurzel and Shaun Grant are developing a TV series based on Richard Flanagan’s Man Booker Prize-winning 2013 book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, according to Variety.

The show will tell a story focused on “a century dominated by war, with its dramatic heart the forced labour of the Thai-Burma Railway” and centres on an Australian doctor taken prisoner during WWII and who becomes “an unlikely and uncomfortable hero after the war’s end.”

“Richard Flanagan’s novel has been hailed as a masterpiece around the world. It had an immensely powerful impact on readers in Australia and was a bestseller globally,” said Fremantle’s Jo Porter and Chris Oliver-Taylor, who are behind the project. “At its core is an achingly powerful insight into the many forms of love, a humanist examination of what links us all, forged through the savagery of war. It a uniquely honest and powerful portrait of a man and the woman he loves.”

Kurzel has directed video game adaptation Assassin’s Creed, upsetting true crime drama Snowtown and a spin on Macbeth, while Grant has written episodes of Mindhunter, and previously worked with Kurzel on both Snowtown and True History of the Kelly Gang.