puts its central family, the Foxes, on the run from its very first episode, which premiered on April 30. The sepia-toned drama stars Justin Theroux and Melissa George as married couple Allie and Margot Fox, who are escaping from their murky past and the American government, taking their teenage children Dina (Logan Polish) and Charlie (Gabriel Bateman) along for the ride. After perilously crossing the desert to enter Mexico, the family finds surprising refuge in a Mexican hacienda under the roof of a powerful matriarch, played by famous singer and actress Ofelia Medina. But is it really a safe space? In this exclusive
Courtesy of AppleTV+.
To say that Paul Theroux, the acclaimed novelist and travel writer, author of 57 books of fiction and non-fiction, is having a moment is an understatement.
His 14th novel,
The Mosquito Coast, published 40 years ago, has just been adapted into an AppleTV+ series, which premiered on April 30. It stars Justin Theroux, Paul s nephew, and both Justin and Paul are executive producers. The adaptation was written by Neil Cross, the British novelist and scriptwriter who created the multi-award winning BBC crime series,
Luther (starring Idris Elba).
The book has not been out of print since its publication an authorial dream. It was also made into a feature film, in 1986, directed by Peter Weir and starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren. And it s had another, exceedingly rare accolade: Banned in South Africa during apartheid, it was un-banned by Nelson Mandela after his 1994 ascent to the South African presidency and in 1995 selected by South Africa s department
Filming The Mosquito Coast in Mexico was challenging for the cast A video promoting the Apple TV+ show The Mosquito Coast reveals the challenges of filming the third episode of the drama by traveling to real-world locations, rather than relying on sound stages. The Mosquito Coast is a drama that follows an American family traveling through the Southwest and into Central America. In a teaser for the third episode, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Apple shows the lengths production took to film the show.
To make the show as real as possible on camera, the cast and crew visited locations in Mexico to accurately depict the group heading across the border and down into the country. The decision made the show more intense for the cast to film than typical location recreation techniques.
For a series that only premiered in late April,
The Mosquito Coast has already had a long life. The story of a possibly brilliant inventor who, with his family, flees to Central America and leaves destruction in his wake began in 1981 with a novel by Paul Theroux, who serves as a producer on the Apple TV+ series; five years later
, it was made into a movie starring Harrison Ford.
The action-packed new series, which stars Theroux’s nephew Justin as protagonist Allie Fox, doesn’t hew too closely to the novel or film, but instead takes themes from the story and weaves them into a new narrative that plays out over seven episodes. And despite the car chases, international adventure, and always-lurking bad guys, the heart of the series’ conflict still exists within the Fox family, played by Theroux, Melissa George (as Margot Fox, Allie’s wife), Gabriel Bateman (as Charlie), and Logan Polish (as Dina).