Ken Follett’s Foray into Film:
What Those Old Scripts Can Tell Us
Ken Follett, the author of blockbuster novels from the 1970s and 1980s
(such as Eye o f the Needle and The Pillars o f the Earth) has long had a
complicated relationship with film. Of his more than 27 books, only a few have
been adapted for the small or large screen: The Key to Rebecca, On Wings o f
Eagles, Lie Down with Lions, and The Third Twin were turned into television
miniseries; only Eye o f the Needle was produced as a full-length theatrically
released movie which appeared in 1981.1
Ironically, Follett, whose work has been termed “cinematic in conception”
(Macdonald 113), developed several projects for film or related media during
the earliest stages of his career. Besides writing television scripts, he novelized
the 1978 Peter Hyam screenplay for Capricorn One, a science fiction film about
a faked Mars landing that starred O.J. Simpson, James Brolin, and Sam
Waterston. Nearly a decade later, as Follett sought out new directions for his
writing, he spent considerable time and effort developing a screenplay
adaptation of his 1985 novel Lie Down With Lions which, although unproduced,
is superior in organization and structure to the script ultimately used for the
1994 television miniseries. Additionally, in his most recent novels, such as Code
to Zero, a certain screenplay sensibility seems to dominate, with a high ratio of
dialogue to concrete description, an emphasis on plot, and a frequent change of
location.
The correlation between Follett’s training as a journalist and his successful
career in fiction has been described at length,2 but the influence of his early—
and little known—work in film and television has remained unexplored. A better
understanding of Follett’s work for visual media is now possible due to the
acquisition of his archives by Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan.
Representing the largest collection of Follett’s business and personal
correspondence, notes, outlines, drafts, and research materials, the 23 boxes of
catalogued materials includes a typescript and galley proofs of Storm Island
(republished as Eye o f the Needle) and transcribed interviews with H. Ross Perot
and others for the writing of On Wings o f Eagles, as well as screenplays Follett
developed for British television and film production companies.
This article will assess three Follett screenplays written in the 1970s—“Ups
and Downs of a Soccer Star” (1976), “Target: Fringe Banking” (1978), and
“Numbers Man: Sheik, Rattle and Roll” (1978)—as well as his adaptation of Lie
Down with Lions (written between 1986 and 1989), and will demonstrate that
the script avoided many of the mistakes of the 1994 television production, which
Follett has termed “dismal” (“Talk Today”).
By 1976, Follett had achieved some modest success as a writer. After
graduating from University College, London in 1970 with a degree in