EXCLUSIVE: Blue Therapy maker Osun Group has optioned its first book in the shape of Yrsa Daley-Ward‘s fiction novel The Catch.
This will see Daley-Wood making her TV screenwriting debut by adapting the book, which is billed as a “supernatural thriller exploring sisterhood, identity, and the radical act of choosing yourself.”
Early stage work has begun on an adaptation for a returning series, marking Osun’s first book-to-screen acquisition and a first scripted project unveiled from a slate of projects. Osun’s Head of Drama, Sheila Nortley, who first worked with Daley-Wood on the 2011 indie feature David is Dying, struck the option agreement.
Daley-Ward, Supacell exec Nortley and Osun founder Luti Fagbenle are executive producers, with the process of finding a showrunner, director and on-screen talent underway.
The Catch, published in July, follows estranged twin sisters Clara and Dempsey, whose lives are upended when Clara, a celebrity author craving validation, spots a woman in London who looks exactly like their long-vanished mother – unchanged by time and unburdened by motherhood. She is convinced this is their mother returned, while the reclusive Dempsey suspects a con. The sisters collide over the stranger’s identity, and are propelled toward a reckoning that threatens their very existence and forces them to confront the wounds of their past.
The book was selected for the New York Times Book Review Book Club and included on summer read lists by the likes of The Washington Post, TIME, USA Today and Forbes.
“The Catch asks, ‘What if the person you fear most and the person you long for most were the same?” said Daley-Ward. “I’ve often wondered what it would be like to meet my mother again, not as she was, but as I am. The TV adaptation takes that unsettling question and spins it into an edgy, psychological suspense about family, obsession, and the terror of recognition.”
Nortley called the book “both vast and otherworldly, yet so deeply intimate and tragically human,” adding, “Yrsa’s storytelling has a way of getting under the skin and holding a mirror up to our most uncomfortable truths. To have such a bold and inventive novel as our first scripted adaptation at Osun Group is both an honour and a statement of intent. I can’t wait to bring it to the screen.”
Daley-Ward, who splits her time between L.A. and London, began her career as a poet, curating deeply personal prose through her Instagram feed. The Catch is her debut fiction novel following her poetry collection The Terrible. She also collaborated with Beyonce, co-writing Black is King, the visual album inspired by Disney+’s The Lion King. She has also acted in shows such as Outer Range, World on Fire and Kwame Kwei-Armah’s upcoming feature directorial debut The Collaboration.
London-based Osun is best known for Blue Therapy, the British unscripted relationships YouTube format that we told you earlier this month had landed its first international version, via Streamz in Belgium.
Daley-Ward is represented by Marya Spence at Janklow & Nesbit Associates, Gary Burkhard at Alan Siegel, the Artists Partnership, Michelle Kroes at CAA and Bloch Law.
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