, andThe two books came out of the experience of running a cooking school for Australian foodies in Italy in 1997.It is likely to be shot next year, in Italy and Australia.Maggie Beer and Stephanie Alexander at the The Kilnhouses in Porepunkah, Victoria.“But we also thought it was fun, and we knew it was a good story, a story about friendship,” adds Alexander. “We’ve got over the dropped jaws now.”“We still think it’s a little unreal,” adds Beer, “but exciting”.
“We’d had a holiday with some friends in Umbria two years before,” Alexander recalls, “and we’d loved setting up house in Italy and enjoying the markets and the shopping and the people so much that Maggie and I said to each other, ‘How can we organise to come back here for longer? How can we do it?’”to do it,” adds Beer, “in terms of time away, expense, etcetera. So that was where the idea of the cooking school came in. But it took 18 months of planning and finding the right place.
Now, boutique production and distribution company Arcadia, based in Orange, NSW and responsible for the Netflix film, has optioned both those books, with the plan to make a movie to be filmed, if all goes well, next year – in Italy, of course., if you will, sprinkled with colourful guest characters but revolving around the two women and their shared love of hospitality.
It won’t all be Chianti and laughter, though, as their bond comes under pressure from the strain of all those guests, and the looming life changes that await upon their return to Australia.