Atonement

t p i r c s g n i ® ATONEMENT Screenplay by CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON based on the novel by IAN MCEWAN introduction by CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON ®A Newmarket Shooting Script Series Book NEWMARKET PRESS • NEW YORK t o o h s e h t n o i t c u n the strange days towards the end of 2001, I was in Thailand preparing to I go location-scouting for a film I’d co-written and was intending to direct, based on a novel by Eric Ambler. I’d brought with me Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement: I always look forward to his books, and this longish novel, I thought, might be the ideal distraction from the gathering conviction that a piece like Ambler’s The Night-Comers—which deals with the quiet, deadly power struggle in Indonesia between moderate and fundamentalist Moslems—would, in the current climate, never even reach the starting gate. So, sitting by the hotel pool, far from the prewar English country landscapes so vividly evoked in the novel, I felt myself sinking into the world of Briony Tallis, so entranced that I could scarcely bring myself to move when the fierce sun shifted and fell across my feet or shoulders. By the time I came back to England, I was convinced that, complex and interiorized as it was, the novel could still be the basis of a powerful film. I contacted my agent, who told me that several writers were already inter- ested in the project and that Ian, who had retained a position as Executive Producer, had reserved the right to interview, vet, or otherwise audition the candidates.