Sisi novels Picture Perfect for television

Picture Perfect Federation is backing a new historical drama based on the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria and written by the creator of BBC series This Life.

Amy Jenkins, who has also worked on The Crown, will pen the series based on the Sisi novels by Allison Pataki.

Picture Perfect Federation, the joint venture from Pascal Breton’s Federation Entertainment and Patrick Wachsberger, acquired the rights to Pataki’s two novels The Accidental Empress and Sisi: Empress on Her Own after receiving the books from production partner MAS Production earlier this year.

Picture Perfect is the studio and distributor attached to the project, which is described as a female-driven period piece with a modern, edgy spin.

The first season is about the unconventional empress and will span 1853 to the First World War to tell the story of a young girl who was thrust into the centre of Europe’s most treacherous imperial court.

Wachsberger, Breton and Ashley Stern are executive producing for Picture Perfect Federation along with Jenkins and Pataki. Michael Shamberg, Alexandra Zimbler Smith and Ameet Shukla are executive producing for MAS Production.

Jenkins most recently adapted Lionel Shriver’s The Post Birthday World for Patrick Melrose producer Two Cities.