The ‘Queen of Crime’, Agatha Christie, returns with the help of AI technology. BBC Studios and Agatha Christie Limited present their new joint project, which brings the legendary author’s writing secrets into the present day.
Also known as the best-selling novelist of all time, Christie has captivated mystery fans with her now classic crime novels. Sadly, we lost this great mind in 1976, who inspired and continues to inspire aspiring writers, regardless of genre. This new course, named Agatha Christie Writing, uses Christie’s own words and is available on the BBC Maestro service.
In this new project, BBC Studios and Agatha Christie Limited have worked together to research Christie’s private letters, interviews, and manuscripts in order to understand her writing style. The project aims to use this to create AI-powered lessons that will teach students how Christie wrote her suspenseful stories, mind-blowing plot twists, and remarkable characters.
Under the guidance of renowned Christie scholars Dr Mark Aldridge, Michelle Kazmer, Gray Robert Brown, and Jamie Bernthal-Hooker, the AI technology will not only create lessons on Christie’s approach to crime fiction but will also imitate the author’s appearance and voice. The licensed imagery and restored audio recordings were used on Vivien Keene, who portrayed Christie based on an accurate script.
James Prichard, Christie’s great-grandson and chairman and CEO of Agatha Christie Limited, celebrated the project, saying: “The team of academics and researchers that BBC Maestro has assembled have extracted from a number of her writings an extraordinary array of her views and opinions on how to write. Through this course, you truly will receive a lesson in crafting a masterful mystery, in Agatha’s very own words.”
And BBC Maestro CEO Michael Levine added: “BBC Maestro was established to offer the next generation of talent a way to get started, to learn, not from teachers, but from those who have done it themselves. To be inspired by learning from the greatest. As an 11-year-old boy reading Why Didn’t they Ask Evans?, I could never have imagined that one day I’d be watching Agatha Christie teaching me how she did it.”
We also heard from the project’s visual effects artist, Thiago Porto, who said: “With only a handful of photographs and no video footage, we had to carefully study every available detail to capture her likeness authentically. Vivien’s performance was the foundation, and through precise craftsmanship and meticulous attention to historical accuracy, we worked to ensure every frame reflected the essence of who she was.”
During her lifetime, Christie wrote 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, selling more than two million books to date. Christie’s return to life with his brilliant mind is fascinating, but it is also curious whether she would have approved of this project had she known about it.
Source: C21 Media
