The experimental theatre company Punchdrunk is set to produce the world’s first immersive TV drama for Sky and HBO. The Third Day, starring Naomie Harris and Jude Law, will be accompanied by what has been described by its makers as an “innovative live event”.
Created by writer Dennis Kelly and Felix Barrett, Punchdrunk’s artistic director, the TV series will tell “three standalone but interconnected stories”. The first part, Summer, will follow Sam (Law), who travels to an island off the coast of Britain where islanders “[preserve] their traditions at any cost”. A companion theatre event will be staged following the broadcast, and will also be available to watch online.
Harris, best known for her roles in the James Bond films Skyfall and Spectre and the Oscar-winning film Moonlight, will star in the final part, Winter, which follows an outsider to the island whose arrival “precipitates a fractious battle to decide its fate”.
Barrett, who founded Punchdrunk in 2000, said: “To tell a story that spans TV and live action has been a long-held ambition of mine. The Third Day will be both a TV show and a world you can enter, giving viewers the chance to live and breathe the narrative.”
Kelly, who co-wrote the TV comedy Pulling with Sharon Horgan for the BBC and the Channel 4 sci-fi thriller Utopia, said: “I wanted to make a series that was unsettling and disturbing but that also spoke to fears that ran deeper than horror. The themes of The Third Day have long been obsessions of mine; it is about loss and hope and how both of those things can distort the mind in surprising and brutal ways.”
Punchdrunk has built a reputation as one of the world’s leading immersive theatre companies, with projects ranging from its cinema-inspired take on Macbeth, Sleep No More – which has been playing to audiences in New York since 2011 – to Kabeiroi, a six-hour show described by the Guardian as “part tourist trip, part cult-initiation ceremony”.
The Third Day, which is co-produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment, will be broadcast in May on Sky Atlantic and Now TV in the UK. Information on the live event and how to apply for tickets is to be announced.
