Experts say around half of what we see on TV is the result of an adapted novel or news article, and the books-to-screen market will be in the spotlight in the coming days. Ahead of next week’s London Book Fair, we’ve rounded up a selection of the hottest novels hitting the Olympia London conference center near Hammersmith. The latest books from the authors behind This is Going to Hurt, The Atlas Six and The Night Agent will be on show, along with titles that bring to mind The Bear and Alias. We hear international film and TV execs are already on the ground in London, taking meetings and getting their game faces on ahead of a busy exhibition. Could one of the below be the next big or small screen adaptation? Read on…
‘A Particularly Nasty Case’ – Adam Kay (Orion)
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It will come as little surprise that This is Going to Hurt scribe Adam Kay’s debut novel graces this list. A Particularly Nasty Case doesn’t come out for six months and sources have told us that the market for yet-to-publish books is diminishing, but, for the ex-Doctor Kay, producers may make an exception. Prominent UTA agent Jason Richman is repping and will be in town for LBF. Shockingly, the book is set in a hospital, following Doctor Eitan Rose and his quest to discover what has happened when a toxic hospital consultant dies of a heart attack. Following the global breakout success of the semi-autobiographical This is Going to Hurt, which starred Ben Whishaw as the rather grumpy Doctor Kay and was lauded on both sides of the pond, we may be seeing A Particularly Nasty Case on the small screen in the not-too-distant future.
‘The Method’ – Matthew Quirk (Morrow)
Not content with a hit Netflix action series, Matthew Quirk is venturing back into thriller territory with The Method. However, whereas The Night Agent follows FBI agent Peter Sutherland, The Method swaps the gender focus and instead follows an actress whose physical and firearms training for action roles is tested when her best friend disappears after consorting with exciting but dangerous figures. The book has been pitched as “Alias meets Little Drummer Girl.” New York Times bestseller Quick has several projects on the go besides The Night Agent, including Amazon MGM series The 500, and this could be the latest addition to his busy schedule. Agent Dan Conaway will be shopping rights during LBF.
‘Girl Dinner’ – Janet Change (WME)
How about this for a pitch? “Compulsive Emily in Paris meets The Bear.” WME’s Co-Head of the UK Books division Hellie Ogden is repping this one, which we hear is actually one of two new books this year titled Girl Dinner. The other one is about female cannibalism and comes from The Atlas Six writer Olivie Blake, but Janet Change’s debut novel is about a downtrodden personal assistant who assumes her dead heiress boss’s identity at culinary school in Paris. Expect Gallic chic, pressure cooker tension and ruminations on identity and class.
‘Broken Toys’ – Marie-Claire Chappet (Peters Fraser + Dunlop)
This one has been building buzz as we head into Book Fair week, and Deadline hears Peters Fraser + Dunlop agent Rosie Gurtovoy is already courting several offers from producers and streamers in the UK and U.S. The work is the debut novel of British magazine journalist Marie-Claire Chappet, a senior features journalist and editor who’s probably more used to profiling stars than being the center of attention herself. Chappet’s story has shades of Saltburn, set in the dying days of the mid-2000s pre-recession era at an elite Scottish university. It follows the relationship of two female students who meet at a college welcoming ceremony and join a group of ten, who over two years of smoke-filled nights and claustrophobic classrooms, experience toxic boys, broken families and destructive love triangles. Catering to both the young adult crowd looking ahead to their futures and melancholy millennials looking back to a bygone time, Broken Toys has the potential to land on screens in several guises.
‘Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won’ – Oliver Bullough (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)
Oliver Bullough has made a career out of, amongst other things, exposing the shadowy forces that launder wealth across countries and continents. In Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won, Bullough, whose previous works include Butler to the World and Moneyland, continues his crusade by revealing how organized criminals move vast amounts of dirty money around the globe. He pulls back the curtain on a sophisticated international operation that connects illegal logging in Papua New Guinea, real estate purchases in Vancouver, terrorism in the Middle East and capital flight from China. Repped by CAA’s Karolina Sutton, Bullough’s latest isn’t due for release for almost a year. Yet, with a synopsis drawing equivalence with hit James Norton-starring BBC drama McMafia, which was itself based on a non-fiction book, this one could be ripe for an early option.
‘Pixie’ – Jill Dawson (Bloomsbury)
Disney+’s A Thousand Blows has proven a global audience penchant for intriguing, forgotten women from history and the subject of Jill Dawson’s Pixie falls squarely into this category. Pixie is based on the story of Pamela Colman Smith, a British artist, illustrator and occultist who is best known for drawing the tarot cards that are still in use by millions today. Just imagining who could play Colman Smith in a TV or movie version of Pixie is enough to seriously excite the producers strutting the Olympia halls. This one is repped by Caroline Dawnay at United.
‘The Original Daughter’ – Jemimah Wei (Weidenfeld, UK; Doubleday, US; Mondadori, Italy, Netherlands)
Reviews of Singaporean writer and podcast host Jemimah Wei’s debut novel, which is expected to publish in May, have been stellar and given the buzz around the well-received Nicole Kidman-starrer Expats, set in Hong Kong, on Prime Video last year, another female-centric story set in an Asian metropolis could be enticing for buyers. The plot follows two sisters in working-class Singapore who have a complicated, intoxicating relationship. Wei, who had a career in the U.S. as host, scriptwriter and producer, is being hailed as a major new literary talent, so there will be plenty of interest at Olympia next week.
The post Seven Buzzy Book-To-Screen Opportunities To Look Out For At Next Week’s London Book Fair appeared first on Deadline.
