The second feature-length adaptation, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was directed by Michael Radford and was released in 1984. It is a reasonably faithful adaptation of the novel and was critically acclaimed. Many of the film's scenes were shot on the actual dates mentioned in the novel. For example, the scene in which Winston Smith writes the date "April 4, 1984" in his diary was filmed on April 4, 1984. The film's soundtrack was performed by the band Eurythmics and a single from it, "Sexcrime ", was a hit in several countries. The film is notable for containing Richard Burton's last performance.
In March 2012 it was announced that a consortium of Hollywood production companies including Imagine Entertainment was set to reboot and make another feature film based on the novel. Reportedly the consortium has secured rights from Orwell's estate. However, no further developments were revealed for some time. In November 2015, Paul Greengrass was attached to direct with Scott Rudin and Gina Rosenblum producing and James Graham writing the screenplay. Rudin and Greengrass had also previously worked together on Captain Phillips. Michael De Luca will oversee production of the upcoming 1984 film for the studio. In 2017, Graham began a rewrite of the film in response to the 2016 United States presidential election and Donald Trump's presidency, which had increased interest in the book. He claimed that the film would be released by 2019. In 2020, Graham confirmed that the project had been postponed after they had difficulty writing a script, saying “Paul and I got very excited about it and then it’s a difficult project. The book is just so bloody perfect, we started going: ‘Let’s just pause for a second.’ The world of surveillance and tech moves on so quickly, we just needed to have a broader view of it.”
Kneale's 1954 adaptation was produced again by the BBC, with some modifications in 1965, directed by Christopher Morahan. Starring David Buck, Joseph O'Conor, Jane Merrow and Cyril Shaps, it was broadcast in BBC2's Theatre 625 anthology series as part of a season of Orwell adaptations sub-titled The World of George Orwell, on 28 November 1965. Long believed lost, on 12 September 2010 it was announced in various media outlets that a copy had been located at the American Library of Congress, although an approximately seven-minute segment in the middle was unrecoverable from the NTSCvideo tape recording. It was recovered amongst a hoard of over 80 lost British television episodes dating from 1957 to 1970.
Radio adaptations
NBC: Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
The first radio broadcast of Nineteen Eighty-Four was a one-hour adaptation transmitted by the United States' NBC radio network at 9pm. on August 27, 1949 as number 55 in the series NBC University Theater, which adapted the world's great novels for broadcast; it starred David Niven as Smith.
The novel has been adapted for the stage several times, including by playwrights Alan Lyddiard and Michael Gene Sullivan. In 1976, a theater version of "1984" was produced in Teatar &TD, from Zagreb, former Yugoslavia. The performance, which also included CCTV monitoring system, was adapted and directed by Nenad Puhovski. It created some political controversies, but was never banned. A 2013 adaptation by Robert Icke and Duncan MacMillan for the Headlong theater company, which took the novel's Newspeak appendix as its starting point, has toured the UK extensively, as well as played commercially in the West End. A Broadway production began previews 18 May and opened on 22 June 2017 at the Hudson Theatre, while an Australian production began a six-city limited tour from 13 May 2017. An early unproduced Jonathan Larson musical, Superbia, was loosely based on 1984.
In 2015 Leeds-based Northern Ballet commissioned choreographer Jonathan Watkins to create a ballet version of the George Orwell novel. In 2016 the ballet was filmed for television and streaming online by The Space and it was broadcast on BBC Four on 28 February 2016. Music for the production was by Alex Baranowski, sets & costume designs were by Simon Daw, and lighting was by Chris Davey.
