A forerunner when it comes to adapting TV for the big screen, the great Ingmar Bergman took his 1973 film Scenes from a Marriage and edited it into a movie that received international acclaim. Now Ingmar’s classic is being reimagined for the small-screen, with HBO casting the powerhouse duo of Michelle Williams and Oscar Isaac as the lead couple in the midst of a disintegrating marriage.
This latest version of Scenes from a Marriage will be a miniseries, written and directed by The Affair creator Hagai Levi. Williams and Isaac will play a married couple as they go through the ups and downs of their relationship: love, anger, betrayal, divorce, and desire.
The original version starred Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson, with Bergman pulling from his own troubled marriage to Ullmann. That personal quality is what gave the series, and the film version, its passionate edge. While this new take won’t have that, is there any doubt a Williams and Isaac can’t replicate it? This is a series that seems primed for awards contention already, doesn’t it?
