The lives of Dame Joan and Jackie Collins are being adapted into a TV drama with the “inside story” of the sisters promising “more than diamonds and shoulder pads”.
The six-hour series will “chart the lives” of the actress and the novelist, “from a teenage bedroom in post-war London to the insatiable glitz and glamour of 1980s Beverly Hills”.
It will show how they battled against sexism, misogyny, harassment, abuse, ageism and for equal pay, before the #MeToo era.
Dame Joan, who has married five times, snapped up one of the last studio contracts in Hollywood’s Golden Age before her Dynasty role as Alexis Carrington made her the highest-paid female star on TV.
Her younger sister, who died aged 77 in 2015, received a record-breaking one million dollar advance for her “bonkbuster” novel Hollywood Wives.
She went on to sell more than 500 million books and wrote the novels behind two of her sister’s films, The Stud and The Bitch.
Producers said the new TV drama would tell the inside story of the “ultimate Hollywood fantasy”.
Dame Joan, now 85, said: “I am delighted that such a prestigious team wants to tell our story.
The actress, who recently starred in American Horror Story, said: “I know my sister Jackie would be as excited as I am to be involved.”
Jackie Collins’ daughters said: “Our mother always told us when we were growing up that ‘Girls can do anything!’ and Joan And Jackie will fabulously depict how true that is!”
Playwright Penelope Skinner, who will pen the series, said: “I am thrilled to be working on the fascinating story of these fabulous, iconic and powerful women.
“There is far more to Joan and Jackie than diamonds and shoulder pads: these are two very special sisters whose lives are both aspirational and inspirational.”
Fable Pictures, a UK-based company which recently made Stan & Ollie, is producing the series.
Casting has not yet been announced.
