Nobel Novelist Orhan Pamuk Finally Gets the Netflix Series He Wanted

Orhan Pamuk fought to control a screen adaptation of his novel "The Museum of Innocence" after receiving a plot summary he found unacceptable. He sued the initial producer, won the suit in 2022 and later negotiated with a Turkish company to impose conditions that would preserve his story.

On Friday the nine-part series will launch on Netflix. Mr. Pamuk, 73, is Turkey’s best-known novelist and a Nobel laureate whose more than 20 books have been translated widely; he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006. He has long set his fiction in Istanbul and in 2012 opened a real Museum of Innocence that displays objects from the book.

After signing with a Hollywood production company in 2019, he objected to major alterations—such as a plotline that would have Kemal get Fusun pregnant—and spent years reclaiming the rights. With Ay Yapim he insisted on close control: no advance payment, no contract until the script was final, page-by-page approval of every episode, credit for the museum and a clause barring a second season.

Turkey, Istanbul

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