Red Riding Quartet: The Yorkshire Ripper Saga Set for Three Films

Posted by Robin Ruinsky (robin@filmschoolrejects.com) on July 8, 2008

Three directors and three films about one man who terrorized Yorkshire, England from 1974 until his capture in 1981. Peter Sutcliffe was known as the Yorkshire Ripper.

British novelist David Peace wrote a four book series about the murders in his “Red Riding Quartet”. The novels have recurring characters and are a story of police corruption set against the backdrop of the Yorkshire murders. Peace has won numerous awards for his writing and his novel “The Damned United” which the author has described as “occult history of Leeds United” football team, is currently being made into a film.

Three of the books will be turned into films directed by a trio of directors which includes Julian Jarrold, Becoming Jane. He’ll direct Nineteen Seventy Four, while James Marsh , Man on Wire, will direct Nineteen Eighty. Anand Tucker, And When Did You Last See Your Father?, will direct Nineteen Eighty Three.

The three films will be broadcast on Briton’s Channel 4 public television station.

Tony Grisoni, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, has written the adaptations for each film and has incorporated elements from Peace’s “Nineteen Seventy Seven” into the three screenplays.

Sutcliffe murdered thirteen women. He sent tapes and letters to the police going so far as signing them “Jack the Ripper”. The married Sutcliffe managed to elude detection for almost ten years, leaving a string of attacks behind him. Some of his victims survived, but most did not. His preferred victims were prostitutes which explains to some extent his use of the Jack the Ripper signature.

The three films are commissioned for television but will get a theatrical release in the UK and will be offered for theatrical distribution. There’s no word yet if there are plans for the series to air in the United States, but this sounds like the kind of project that any US public television station would add to their programming.

Read more articles by Robin Ruinsky