Jim Broadbent to star in Julian Barnes film adaptation

Julian Barnes’ Booker Prize-winning novel “The Sense of an Ending” will be coming to the big screen. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Jim Broadbent will star in the drama about a man in his 60s who is forced to come to terms with his past after receiving a journal that belonged to an old friend.

Barnes’ 163-page novel, released in 2011, drew widespread praise from critics, and was nominated for a Costa Book Award. Writing for The Times, Martin Rubin called the book a “little jewel of conciseness and precision,” and said that it “packs into so few pages so much that the reader finishes it with a sense of satisfaction more often derived from novels several times its length.”

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the movie will be directed by Ritesh Batra, the Indian filmmaker whose debut feature, “The Lunchbox,” was a hit at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013. Playwright Nick Payne is writing the screenplay. The project is being financed by FilmNation Entertainment and BBC Films.

Christine Langan, head of BBC Films, expressed enthusiasm for the project, saying, “It’s been a thrill to watch Nick’s first screenplay take shape and to match his brilliantly engaging adaptation of Julian’s intriguing novel with such an exciting filmmaker as Ritesh.”

Broadbent, who will play Tony Webster, the book’s main character, has won acclaim for previous films adapted from books, such as “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” “Nicholas Nickleby” and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” He won the 2001 Academy Award for supporting actor for his portrayal of literary critic John Bayley in “Iris,” a biopic chronicling the relationship between Bayley and British author Iris Murdoch.