Rights sales: Screen
Among recent book to screen adaptations, Cognito Entertainment, a new independent film and television production company in the United States, has optioned Every Version of You (Grace Chan, Affirm) for adaptation into an international feature film, in a deal negotiated by Bold Type Agency on behalf of Jacinta di Mase Management and Chan. Set in the near future, Every Version of You centres on a star-crossed romance between lovers separated by the boundary between our world and the metaverse.
Two book adaptations are also among 47 projects to share A$1.2 million of story development funding from Screen Australia. Funding will go towards adaptations of Jessie Tu’s novel A Lonely Girl Is a Dangerous Thing (Allen & Unwin) and Mimi Kwa’s memoir House of Kwa (ABC Books), which will be filmed as drama series under the same titles.
The nonfiction book Sex: Two billion years of procreation and recreation (David Baker, Black Inc.) has been optioned by documentary producers Smith&Nasht for adaptation as a science television series, in a deal negotiated by Sophy Williams at Black Inc. The title ‘traces where all the facets of human sexuality came from, starting at the creation of sex approximately two billion years ago and chasing it down our evolutionary family tree—from dinosaurs to primates and the earliest humans—until we arrive at the present, revealing why humanity’s baffling array of passions, impulses and fetishes are the way they are’, according to the publisher.
Finally, a four-part adaptation of Scrublands (Chris Hammer, Allen & Unwin) has been acquired by the BBC from Abacus Media Rights, which has international distribution rights for the series, and will screen on streaming platform Stan in 2024. Scrublands is set in an isolated country town, where a charismatic and dedicated young priest calmly opens fire on his congregation, killing five parishioners. One year later, troubled journalist Martin Scarsden arrives in Riversend to write what should be a simple feature story on the anniversary of the tragedy. But when the journalist digs beneath the surface, the previously accepted narrative of the crime begins to fall apart, and he finds himself in a life and death race to uncover the truth.
Category: Think Australian rights
