Nick Cave on the TV and Film adaptations of his novels

Nick Cave has recently revealed that two of his books are currently in the works to become TV series or movies.

• READ MORE: Nick Cave: “There’s no metric that says virtuousness makes good art”

Speaking to NME as part of a recent “good faith conversation”, Cave shared that the adaptation of his book, The Death Of Bunny Munro, into a TV series was “chugging along”. The adaptation was mooted over a decade ago with the Black Seeds frontman stating he originally wrote the story as a screenplay, but had it published as a novel after it failed to move forward.

The Death Of Bunny Munro is a dark and humorous book centred around the life of a sex-addicted cosmetics salesman after his wife commits suicide.

Cave had previously mentioned that Actor Ray Winstone was “dying” to play the part of Bunny telling Empire more than a decade ago that: “[Winstone] really loved the script when we first handed it to him. He was really excited about it and really distressed it kinda tanked and never got made.”

When asked if Winstone would still be set to play the sex addict lead in the adaptation, Cave jokingly responded “I think Ray is too old to even get it up! That was a joke, Ray. There are actors attached, but I don’t know what I can say about it but I’m happy about it.”

Cave also revealed that another one of his novels was in the works of being adapted.  “There’s [1989 novel] And The Ass Saw The Angel as well as a TV series or movie, but they’re quite advanced.” He continued: “And The Ass Saw The Angel is insane. If it gets made, the ideas we have for it are off the planet. It’s very different from the book.”

The musician and screenwriter also discussed his canned Gladiator 2 screenplay and was asked if he was bitter that the sequel is moving forward without him. He responded: “It’s an outrage! How dare they? Is Russell Crowe anything to do with it? He’s a great actor. He can be amazing. He’s one of those actors that can be a wildcard. Like Mel Gibson too, there’s something just a little off going on that’s pretty exciting.”

Elsewhere in his conversation with NME, Cave followed up on the reaction to him attending King Charles’ coronation.

Back in January, Cave confirmed that he’d started work on a new Bad Seeds album, sharing some early lyric ideas in the process.

Nick Cave’s last album with The Bad Seeds, ‘Ghosteen’, came out in 2019, described by NME in a five-star review as “a beautiful account of harrowing grief”.