ENRON To Get Big Screen Adaptation

Columbia Pictures has purchased screen rights to ENRON, Lucy Prebble's new play investigating the infamous energy company's 2001 scandal that is currently running at London's Royal Court Theatre. The production will premiere on the West End on January 16, 2010.  

Prebble, an emerging British Ppaywright, will adapt her own script for the screen.  Laura Ziskin will produce.  Prebble has previosuly adapted the "The Secret Diary of a Call Girl," based on the novel, for television.

Following its West End run at the Noel Coward Theatre (opening night is scheduled for January 26th), ENRON is projected to make its Broadway debut in the spring of 2010.  

 The stage production of ENRON premiered this summer at the Chichester Festival.  It is produced by Headlong, Chichester Festival Theatre and The Royal Court Theatre in conjunction with Matthew Byam Shaw, ACT Productions, Caro Newling for Neal St. Productions, Jeffrey Richard and Jerry Frankel.  It is directed by Rupert Goold and designed by 2009 Tony Award winner Anthony Ward.  Music and sound is by Adam Cork, with lighting by Mark Henderson, video and projection by Jon Driscoll and movement by Scott Ambler.

The show stars original cast Samuel West, Gllian Budd, Peter Caulfield, Howard Charles, Andrew Corbett, Amanda Drew, Susannah Fellows, Stephen Fewell, Tom Godwin, Tom Goodman-Hill, Orion Lee, Eleanor Matsuura, Tim Pigott-Smith, Ashley Rolfe, and Trevor White.

The ERON financial ruse, an arguably inexhaustible topic, was previously treated on screen in "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," the 2005 documentary film based on the best-selling 2003 book of the same name.

Lucy Prebble first gained notarity for her short play, LIQUID, which won the PMA Most Promising Playwright Award. Prebble subsequently won the prestigious George Devine Award for her debut play THE SUGAR SYNDROME in May 2004, after it premiered at the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Upstairs in October and November of 2003.  The TMA Award for Best New Play in October 2004 followed. Since THE SUGAR SYNDROME, she has worked on other plays and TV shows and was the creator of the popular television mini-series "Secret Diary of a Call Girl," adapted from the novel. She has commissions from the Royal National Theatre as well as The Royal Court Theatre.  Her second play, ENRON which is produced by Headlong Theatre, premiered at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2009 before transferring to the Royal Court.