Red Riding heading to the big screen

Ridley Scott is planning to remake Channel 4's Yorkshire crime trilogy Red Riding as a Hollywood movie.

Columbia Pictures has bought the remake rights to the TV series, and to the original quartet of novels by David Peace on which it was based.

Scott drove the deal after seeing the Red Riding trilogy and taking it to Oscar-winning screenwriter Steve Zaillian, with whom he previously collaborated on American Gangster and Hannibal.

Zaillian (Schindler's List) will be responsible for translating Peace's own distinctive brand of Tyke noir into an American setting. According to Andrew Eaton, the producer of the C4 series who will also co-produce the remake, the plan is to relocate the story from Yorkshire to a run-down industrial state such as Pennsylvania.

Peace's novels are each titled by the year in which they take place – 1974, 1977, 1980 and 1983. They mix fact and fiction, delving into child murders and police corruption against the backdrop of the Yorkshire Ripper enquiry, the Silver Jubilee and the political tensions of the early Thatcher years.

The C4 adaptation consists of three films by the same writer, Tony Grisoni, but different directors – 1974 by Julian Jarrold, 1980 by James Marsh and 1983 by Anand Tucker. The script for 1977 was written but not shot for budgetary reasons.

Although made for television broadcast in the UK, the trilogy is set for a cinema release in several countries, including the US, France and Germany.

The critical reception has been particularly strong in America. Film historian David Thomson caused a stir at the recent Telluride Film Festival by writing in the festival programme that Red Riding was "better than The Godfather".

Variety critic Todd McCarthy described it as a "compelling, disturbing crime drama that leapfrogs through a decade's worth of corruption and venality, leaving everyone in its vicinity permanently soiled or six feet under."

Scott will produce the movie version through his own company, Scott Free, along with Zaillian's Film Rites and Eaton's Revolution Films.

Eaton still hopes one day to produce the unmade 1997 script. But the remake deal means he's contractually forbidden to do so until two years after the release of the American movie.