And Then There Were None Agatha Christie

And Then There Were None has had more adaptations than any other work by Agatha Christie.[2] Christie herself changed the bleak ending to a more palatable one for theatre audiences when she adapted the novel for the stage in 1943. Many adaptations incorporate changes to the story, such as using Christie's alternative ending from her stage play or changing the setting to locations other than an island.

Film

There have been numerous film adaptations of the novel:

• And Then There Were None (1945), American film by René Clair
• Ten Little Indians (1965), British film directed by George Pollock and produced by Harry Alan Towers; Pollock had previously handled four Miss Marple films starring Margaret Rutherford. Set in a mountain retreat in Austria.
• Gumnaam (1965, translation: Unknown or Anonymous), an Indian suspense thriller. This loose, uncredited Hindi film adaptation added the characteristic "Bollywood" elements of comedy, music and dance to Christie's plot.[44]
• Nadu Iravil (1970, translation: In the middle of the night), a Tamil adaptation directed by S. Balachander[45]
• And Then There Were None (1974), the first English-language colour version, directed by Peter Collinson and produced by Harry Alan Towers. Based on a screenplay by Towers (writing as "Peter Welbeck"), who co-wrote the screenplay for the 1965 film. Set at a grand hotel in the Iranian desert.
• Ten Little Maidens, a 1985 adult film starring Nina Hartley, Amber Lynn, Eric Edwards, Harry Reems and Ginger Lynn
• Desyat' Negrityat (1987, Десять негритят, translation: Ten Little Negroes) a Russian adaptation produced/directed by Stanislav Govorukhin, notable for being the first cinema adaptation to keep the novel's original plot and grim ending.
• Ten Little Indians, a 1989 British version, produced by Harry Alan Towers and directed by Alan Birkinshaw, set on safari in the African savannah
• Aduthathu, a 2012 Tamil adaptation[46]
• Aatagara, a 2015 Kannada adaptation[47]

Radio

The BBC broadcast Ten Little Niggers (1947), adapted by Ayton Whitaker, first aired as a Monday Matinee on the BBC Home Service on 27 December 1947 and as Saturday Night Theatre on the BBC Light Programme on 29 December.[48]

On 13 November 2010, as part of its Saturday Play series, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a 90-minute adaptation written by Joy Wilkinson. The production was directed by Mary Peate and featured Geoffrey Whitehead as Mr Justice Wargrave, Lyndsey Marshal as Vera Claythorne, Alex Wyndham as Philip Lombard, John Rowe as Dr Armstrong, and Joanna Monro as Emily Brent.

Stage

And Then There Were None (1943) is Christie's adaptation of the story for the stage. She and the producers agreed that audiences might not flock to a tale with such a grim ending as the novel, nor would it work well dramatically as there would be no one left to tell the story. Christie reworked the ending for Lombard and Vera to be innocent of the crimes of which they were accused, survive, and fall in love with each other. Some of the names were also changed, e.g., General MacArthur became General McKenzie in both the New York and London productions.[49][50] By 1943, General Douglas MacArthur was playing a prominent role in the Pacific Theatre of World War II, which may explain the change of the character's name.

Ten Little Niggers (1944): Dundee Repertory Theatre Company was given special permission to restore the original ending of the novel. The company first performed a stage adaptation of the novel in August 1944 under the UK title of the novel, with Christie credited as the dramatist.[51] It was the first performance in repertory theatre.[51] It was staged again in 1965.[52] There was an article in the Dundee Evening Register in August 1944 about it.

And Then There Were None (2005): On 14 October 2005, a new version of the play, written by Kevin Elyot and directed by Steven Pimlott, opened at the Gielgud Theatre in London. For this version, Elyot returned to the original story in the novel, restoring the nihilism of the original.[53]

Television

Several variations of the original novel were adapted for television, three of which were British adaptations. The first of these, in 1949, was produced by the BBC.[54] The second was produced in 1959,[55] by ITV. Both of those productions aired with Christie's original title. The third and most recent British adaptation aired as And Then There Were None on BBC One in December 2015, as a drama serial broadcast on three consecutive nights, produced in cooperation with Acorn Media and Agatha Christie Productions. The 2015 production adhered more closely to the original plot, though there were several differences to backstories and actual murders on the island, and was the first English language live-action adaptation to feature an ending similar to that of the novel. It was directed by Craig Viveiros and adapted for television by Sarah Phelps.[56]

An American TV movie aired on NBC 18 January 1959. It was directed by Paul Bogart, and starred Barry Jones and Nina Foch.

There have been many foreign-language TV adaptations:

• A Portuguese-language version for Brazilian television, broadcast 16 February 1957, titled O Caso dos Dez Negrinhos
• O Caso dos Dez Negrinhos, a 1963 episode of the Brazilian anthology series Grande Teatro Tupi
• A West German television production, Zehn kleine Negerlein, which aired in 1969
• Dix petits nègres, a 1970 episode of the French anthology series Au théâtre ce soir
• Achra Abid Zghar (1974, translation: Ten Little Slaves), a Télé Liban TV series directed by Jean Fayyad, adapted for television by Latifeh Moultaka
• Deka Mikroi Negroi, a 1978 episode of the Greek anthology series To theatro tis Defteras
• A free Spanish adaptation made by RTVE in 2011 as the two-parter The mystery of the ten strangers for the second season of Los misterios de Laura (part 1 and part 2)
• Achra Abid Zghar (2014, translation: Ten Little Slaves), an MTV Lebanon television production
• Soshite daremo inakunatta (そして誰もいなくなった), a two-part Japanese-language adaptation by Shukei Nagasaka (長坂秀佳, Nagasaka Shukei) set in modern times, aired 25 and 26 March 2017 on TV Asahi in Japan. It was directed by Seiji Izumi and adapted for television by Hideka Nagasaka.[57][58]
• Ils étaient dix, a French six-part miniseries produced by M6 and aired in 2020, set on a tropical island in present time

In 2010, American animated TV series Family Guy adapted the story as "And Then There Were Fewer".[59]

Other media

The novel was the inspiration for several video games. For the Apple II, Online Systems released Mystery House in 1980. On the PC, The Adventure Company released Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None in 2005, the first in a series of PC games based on Christie novels. In February 2008, it was ported to the Wii console.[60]

The Japanese visual novel series Umineko When They Cry also drew inspiration from the novel on many fronts. Both stories involve a series of murders on an island during a storm intended to be unsolvable murders where everyone on the island dies. There is a poem that foretells the series of deaths beforehand in both as well. Finally, the solution to both mysteries are tossed into the ocean in the form of messages in a bottle for the reader to learn from at the end of the stories. This is exemplified by the manga version of the series directly referencing And Then There Were None in its last chapter.[61]

And Then There Were None was released by HarperCollins as a graphic novel adaptation on 30 April 2009, adapted by François Rivière and illustrated by Frank Leclercq.

In 2014 Peká Editorial released a board game based on the book, Diez Negritos ("Ten Little Negroes"), created by Judit Hurtado and Fernando Chavarría, and illustrated by Esperanza Peinado.[62]

The 2014 live action comedy-crime and murder mystery TV web series Ten Little Roosters, produced by American company Rooster Teeth, is largely inspired by And Then There Were None.[63]