JK Rowling 'to collaborate' with BBC on Cormoran Strike TV adaptation

Bestselling novels The Cuckoo's Calling and The Silkworm will form the basis of a new TV series

The Casual Vacancy will hit television screens early next year, but the BBC is already planning its next collaboration with Harry Potter author JK Rowling.

It has has unveiled plans for a TV series based on the crime novels she wrote under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

Her first crime novel, The Cuckoo's Calling, was initially published to little fanfare and positive reviews several months before Rowling was unmasked as its author, after which it became a huge bestseller.

Both The Cuckoo's Calling, and Rowling's recent follow-up, The Silkworm, centre around a one-legged army policeman-turned-private-eye called Cormoran Strike.

The Cuckoo's Calling Book Cover by Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling)

Both books will form the basis for a BBC One drama adaptation with the corporation saying Rowling will "collaborate on the project" with the number and length of episodes still to be decided.

Director of BBC Television Danny Cohen said: "It's a wonderful coup for BBC Television to be bringing JK Rowling's latest books to the screen. With the rich character of Cormoran Strike at their heart, these dramas will be event television across the world."

The shows will be produced by Bronte Film and TV, who worked on the BBC drama of Rowling's novel The Casual Vacancy, which will be screened in February.

Its chairman, Neil Blair, said: "We're delighted to be bringing these best-selling novels to the screen and to be working once again alongside the BBC."

Speaking earlier this year at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, Rowling said she wanted to make the books into "a series" that would run for longer than her hugely successful seven Harry Potter books.

She said: "It's pretty open ended. I really love writing, so I don't know that I've got an end point in mind.

"One of the things I love about this genre is unlike Harry Potter, where there was a through line, where there was an overarching story, a beginning and end, you are talking about discreet stories. So while a detective lives, you can keep giving him cases."