James Fenimore Cooper hive, unite! The literary classic Last of the Mohicans is being adapted into a new TV show for HBO Max, promising to introduce a new generation to Uncas, Cora, Hawkeye and all the rest during the Seven Years’ War in pre-Revolution North America. (That is, assuming they haven’t read it in American Lit yet).
Eyebrows were raised on this one, since the adaptation will be produced and co-written by Cary Fukunaga, who directed the first season of True Detective and is just now wrapping work on No Time to Die, the latest in the James Bond franchise. Just as intriguing, it’ll be directed by Nicole Kassell, who directed three episodes of HBO’s Watchmen including “God Walks Into Abar”, one of the year’s best episodes of television.
In the original novel, sisters Alice and Cora Munroe are guided through a treacherous American wilderness to safety by frontiersman Natty Bumppo, soldier Major Duncan Heyward and the indigenous Americans Chingachgook and Uncas. The novel is probably best known today for the 1992 film adaptation starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe.
There’s no release date yet, but HBO is apparently looking to debut the series on their upcoming streaming service HBO Max, so things are probably at least a year off. It will find you!
