Independent Hollywood studio wiip and Roy Kapur Films have partnered to develop and produce the best-selling historical book on colonialism, The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise Of The East India Company, by acclaimed historian and author William Dalrymple, into a premium series for television. Executive producers on the project will be wiip’s Paul Lee (left in picture above; picture courtesy Apple), Mark Roybal, Siddharth Roy Kapur (right in picture), Naz Haider and Siva Natarajan.
The TV series will be mounted as an international co-production between wiip and Roy Kapur Films to be produced across the US, UK and India. A diverse international team of writers will be put together to create a global series in scale and quality.
The Anarchy was among the top 10 books recommended by US president Barack Obama in 2019 and was named one of the best books of the year by The Wall Street Journal in the same year. The book also received the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for the longlist, and was the no. 1 bestseller in India on Amazon. It tells the story of how one of the world’s most magnificent empires, the Mughal empire, disintegrated and came to be replaced by the East India Company.