Red Planet Pictures to adapt Will Dean’s Tuva series, with Rose Ayling-Ellis to star

Source: Red Planet Pictures

Red Planet Pictures (known for DEATH IN PARADISE and SANDITON) has acquired the rights to adapt Will Dean’s Tuva Moodyson crime novels from Conrad Williams at Blake Friedmann Literary Agency.   Strictly Come Dancing winner Rose Ayling-Ellis (whose acting credits include EASTENDERS and AS YOU LIKE IT) is to star as its redoubtable heroine, Tuva Moodyson.

Moving back to her hometown in the wilds of Scotland, Tuva finds herself working on a small-time local paper, desperate for a scoop.  When a serial killer who has remained dormant for twenty years starts to kill again, Tuva finds herself with a front-page story that could make her career.  If it doesn’t kill her first.

DARK PINES, the first in the Tuva Moodyson series, was published to huge critical acclaim in 2018, shortlisted for Not the Booker prize, and named as a Daily Telegraph ‘Book of the Year’. RED SNOW and BLACK RIVER were both longlisted for ‘Crime Novel of the Year’ at the Theakston Old Peculier Awards in 2020 and 2021 respectively. The latest in the series, WOLF PACK, has been delighting readers and critics alike, with the Observer picking it as their ‘Book of the Month’ and Allison Flood declaring it to be ‘claustrophobically horrifying.’

The  series is being adapted into a six-part returning crime thriller series by screenwriter and award-winning playwright Charlotte Jones. Currently in development under the working title TUVA, it moves the setting of the series from Sweden to the UK. It will be exec-produced by Belinda Campbell and Caroline Skinner for Red Planet Pictures.

Hodder is set to publish ICE TOWN, the sixth book in the Tuva Moodyson series, in October 2024.

About Will Dean

Photo credit: Rosalind Hobley

Will Dean grew up in the East Midlands, living in nine different villages before the age of eighteen. After studying law at the LSE, and working many varied jobs in London, he settled in rural Sweden with his wife. He built a wooden house in a boggy forest clearing and it's from this base that he compulsively reads and writes.

Will’s first standalone novel, THE LAST THING TO BURN, was a word-of-mouth sensation reviewed positively by readers and media alike. It was shortlisted for Thriller Book of the Year at the Fingerprint Awards 2022, Crime Novel of the Year at the Theakston Old Peculier Awards 2022 and the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2022 and was longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award 2022.

Hodder published his third standalone novel, THE LAST PASSENGER, in the UK in May 2023, while Emily Bestler Books (Simon & Schuster) published in the US. He is currently writing his fourth book for both publishers, THE CHAMBER.

Praise for Tuva book series

‘Tuva […] is admirably resilient, full of warmth and humour (as well as having curious gastronomic tastes) and generally manages to identify the murderers who skulk among the strange inhabitants of the region… Her travails may well give sensitive readers nightmares, but that’s a small price to pay for spending time in her exhilarating company.’ – Natasha Cooper, Literary Review

‘Crackles along at a roaring pace, as Dean piles on sinister locals, hideous troll figures and danger in the dripping wet forest…’ – Observer

‘Tuva is a wonderful creation and Dean’s series is not to be missed.’ – Daily Express

‘It's great. You get snow, ice, Swedishness, murder and liquorice!’ – Marian Keyes

‘Atmospheric, creepy and tense. Loved the Twin Peaks vibe. Loved Tuva. More please!’ – C.J. Tudor, author of THE CHALK MAN

‘Scandi Noir meets Gormenghast. Just wonderful. Can’t get enough of Tuva Moodyson…’ – Mark Billingham

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BFLA OPEN WEEK: What’s Right for Rights?

Written by Roya Sarrafi-Rohar

Many people don’t know what a literary agency does, and most new authors are no different. Some might have been surprised to learn that their manuscript’s journey to publication is likely to start with a literary agent (or assistant!), rather than with an editor at a publishing house, and wonder why that is. In response, an agent can explain all the things they do to help books find their readers and help authors build careers. But we can also explain it in more hard-nosed terms: an agent’s job is ultimately to sell rights. While this might not be the most exciting topic for an aspiring author, it’s helpful to understand what we mean by rights and why they matter.

An author will (usually) own the copyright to their work. A book deal (generally) involves an author granting the publisher a licence to print, sell and promote their work in book form, although many other rights might be included too: the author will still technically “own” their work, but the publisher has the right to use it in the ways made clear in their contract, and with certain conditions.

When we grant rights to a publisher, they are always defined and limited: they will cover specific formats and languages, across specific territories (e.g. UK and Commonwealth, or US + Canada), for a certain period, and each of these rights will be exclusive or non-exclusive. Rights can be split up by and agent and sold to different publishers, and non-exclusive rights can be sold more than once. This means that an author and agent can find lots of new sources of income from one book, in different territories, languages or formats, and can decide which publisher would be best for the book in each case.

What all this looks like in practice will vary a lot from deal to deal, and there are a lot of factors the agent and author need to consider when deciding what rights to grant or hold back. But in a UK book deal, the exclusive rights are most likely to be limited to the English language, in the UK and Commonwealth territories, for full term of copyright, in print, eBook and often audio formats too, along with certain other rights.  

If you have a UK book deal that looks like that, it means that the author and their agent have held on to a lot of other rights that you can sell elsewhere. You can sell rights to publish in the US to a US-based publisher, where they are probably best placed to sell the book to local readers, or you can sell French translation rights to a publisher based in France. If you have a licence term of 5-8 years, as you often do in audio or translation deals, you can renew or sell the same rights all over again after that term has expired.

It is a huge task to keep track of all these available rights, all the deals made, the various editors and publishers in the picture, as well as the trends in markets across the world – it’s extremely challenging for an author to do alone, and this is what a literary agency specialises in.

There are also other rights your agent might license, which don’t strictly involve publishing the work as a book. There are straight reading rights, for example, for when the work is abridged and read on the radio (for example, as Radio 4 Book of the Week). The most significant of these additional rights is probably film and TV rights, although that world works very differently to book publishing. Some literary agencies, including Blake Friedmann, have an in-house media department which can handle book-to-film deals for our authors.

All of this might make it clear why an author should care about what happens with the rights to their work – it can mean that they earn more money, that their book available to more people, and they have more control over what happens with their book/s.  

If an author has the option of a book deal directly with a publisher, and they are wondering whether it’s worth getting an agent, one thing they should consider is what will happen with all these rights if looked after by the publisher. Often, when an author deals directly with a publisher, many more rights will be granted to the publisher, as an unagented author can’t do much with them anyway. The publisher’s rights department might then sell the rights they aren’t exploiting themselves on to other publishers, such as audio or translation publishers. They will take a cut of the income from these sublicences and pass the rest on to the author.

In theory, you could get very good financial terms in a deal like this, if your work is with a publisher with an active rights department, meaning you are no worse off with a publisher handling these rights than a literary agency – but this is often not the case in practice. An agent is vested in finding as many revenue streams as possible for their author, and building them long-term publishing relationships around the world. A publisher may not have the same resources or financial incentive to sell rights. So if an author thinks their book can lead to lots of separate deals in different formats and territories, they are likely to be better off with an agent.

Of course, this is only one aspect of what an agent offers an author, and the decision whether to find an agent, and which, should be considered alongside the value of industry expertise, vision for the book/s and editorial input, not to mention the personal relationship between author and agent. We could be considered a little biased on this issue, but we have an incredible Rights team who are keen to see our books translated around the world and possibly even watched on screen!

TV RIGHTS TO T.C. FARREN’S THE BOOK OF MALACHI ACQUIRED BY LITTLE ISLAND PRODUCTIONS

Little Island Productions has acquired the television rights to T.C. Farren’s THE BOOK OF MALACHI from Louisa Minghella at Blake Friedmann.

The story follows Malachi, a mute thirty-year-old man who receives an extraordinary job offer. In exchange for six months as a warden on a top-secret organ-farming project, Raizier Pharmaceuticals will graft him a new tongue. Malachi finds himself on an oil rig among warlords and mass murderers. But do the prisoner-donors deserve their fate?

Little Island Productions was founded by producer Helen Flint (Patrick Melrose, Summer of Rockets) in 2013, and specialises in high-end scripted drama for domestic and international markets. It is currently in production on big-canvas fantasy adventure series The Wheel Of Time, which is co-produced with Sony for Amazon.

Producer Suzan Harrison (The Dresser) is Little Island’s Head of Development, and the Development Executive is Bryony Cunningham (Patrick Melrose). 

Suzan Harrison said: ‘THE BOOK OF MALACHI’ is an intense and beautifully written story that explores themes of race, disability, and sexuality. T.C Farren has created an extraordinary world, and we’re thrilled to bring it to the screen.’

T.C. Farren said: ‘People who read the book often say they’ve just watched a movie. I felt the same way writing it. It is wonderful that Little Island Productions are going to make this materialise’.

THE BOOK OF MALACHI was published in the UK in October 2020 by Titan Books, and in South Africa in 2019 by Kwela, while the audio edition is available from Bolinda. Titan will also release THE BOOK OF MALACHI in the US on 10th November. The novel was nominated for the Nommo Awards for Speculative Fiction 2020.

About T.C. Farren

T.C. Farren is a prize-winning novelist and scriptwriter, based in Cape Town. Her first novel, WHIPLASH won both humanitarian and literary awards. Her screenplay adaptation gave rise to the feature film, TESS, which won numerous awards, including a prestigious screenwriting nomination. She also adapted her highly acclaimed second novel, SNAKE to a screenplay which has won production funding and is due to be produced soon. HOTEL NOWHERE, T.C. Farren’s drug trafficking thriller script has recently been selected for development.

Praise for THE BOOK OF MALACHI

‘Farren has created an extraordinary narrator in Malachi... An intense and memorable read.’ – SFX

‘Grace and hope elevate THE BOOK OF MALACHI from the foundations of its sci-fi action thriller narrative. The questions Farren asks about who controls our ideas about forgiveness, who deserves it and why, could stay with you for a long time.’ – New Scientist

‘Farren is an exceptional writer, one of the best I’ve encountered, and not just in this country. By the time the novel ended, I was bereft, missing the characters and the setting as if I’d spent real time in an actual place. I can’t recommend this powerful novel highly enough.’ — Janet van Eeden Harrison, LitNet

‘Her descriptive powers are faultless, but more than that her understanding and exposition of what it is to be human, even in a broken form is magical… Sheer genius … Utterly brilliant.’ — Jennifer Crocker, Cape Times

‘Will have you ripping through the pages. Part thriller, part horror, part speculative fiction: this gripping read goes to the heart of ethical quandaries, forcing the reader to ask: “What if it were me?”’ — Sunday Times (SA)

‘An extraordinary, moving story that I read sometimes through the gaps in my fingers, like peeking at a horror movie — but one with hope and some exquisite visuals.’ — Country Life

T.C. Farren’s website

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