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Eric Bercovici was an American television/film producer and screenwriter. He was best known for producing and adapting the screenplay for the 1980 television miniseries ShÅgun.
Born in New York City in 1933 to screenwriter Leonardo Bercovici, he studied theater at Yale University. His career had barely begun when his father was blacklisted from the late 1940s through the late 1950s. Eric Bercovici then went to Europe to work on films, returning to the U.S. in 1965. He then began writing episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., I Spy, and The Danny Thomas Hour. He wrote the screenplays for the 1968 films Hell in the Pacific and Day of the Evil Gun. In the 1970s, he wrote episodes for Hawaii Five-O and created the series Assignment Vienna and its pilot Assignment: Munich. In 1977, he adapted John Ehrlichman's novel, The Company, into a miniseries titled Washington: Behind Closed Doors.
In 1980, Bercovici adapted James Clavell's 1975 novel, ShÅgun, about an English seaman marooned in 17th century Japan, into a nine-hour miniseries of of the same name. He was also a producer of the series. ShÅgun won three of its 14 Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Miniseries, and all three of its Golden Globe nominations, including Best TV Series – Drama. At the time, it was also one of the highest-rated miniseries in television history, second only to Roots.
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