‘The Yield’ among numerous novels optioned for screen
Tara June Winch’s 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award-winning novel The Yield (Penguin) has been optioned for the screen.
The Yield centres on Albert ‘Poppy’ Gondiwindi and his granddaughter August, who has been living on the other side of the world for 10 years when she learns of his death. Her homecoming is bittersweet as she confronts the love of her kin and news that her family’s land is to be repossessed by a mining company.
‘We feel very privileged that Tara June Winch has trusted us with this important and powerful story of language, culture and survival,’ said producer Tony Briggs. ‘This layered story is a homage to Aboriginal language in a way that we haven’t seen before.’
Rights to The Yield have previously been licensed in North America, the UK, France, the Netherlands, Germany and China. Winch is represented by Melanie Ostell Literary with the screen option and purchase negotiated by Penguin Random House Australia.
Amazon Prime Video has commissioned a seven-part series adaptation of Holly Ringland’s 2018 novel The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (Fourth Estate), to be produced by Amazon Studios, Endeavor Content and Bruna Papandrea of Made Up Stories. The series, set against Australia’s natural landscape, follows nine-year-old Alice as she is taken in by her estranged grandmother after a family tragedy, and spans decades as Alice grows into a woman. The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart has been sold into over 24 territories internationally.
Screen adaptation rights to the ‘feel good’ crime novel The Nancys by Melbourne-based New Zealand author R W R McDonald (Allen & Unwin) have been optioned by Hoodlum Entertainment, via Grace Heifetz of Left Bank Literary. The Nancys, which won the best first novel award at the 2020 New Zealand Ngaio Marsh awards for crime writing, follows a trio of amateur detectives: 11-year-old Tippy Chan, her uncle and babysitter Pike and Uncle Pike’s boyfriend Devon. A sequel to the novel, Nancy Business, has just been released by Allen & Unwin.
Amanda Bridgeman’s 2018 sci-fi novel The Subjugate (Watkins) is being adapted into a dystopian crime thriller series by independent production companies Aquarius Films and Anonymous Content, in a deal brokered by Alex Adsett Publishing Services. The novel is set in 2040, when a series of murders sends shockwaves through a religious community that has turned its back on technology and the modern world. Aquarius Films said: ‘The Subjugate explores topical themes of rehabilitation, recidivism and advancing technology in a captivating near-future science fiction thriller and is perfect raw material for a compelling TV series.’
Category: Think Australian rights
