Lookout Point and Expanded Media prep Deon Meyer’s Devil’s Peak

BBC Studios and South Africa’s MultiChoice Studios have joined forces to commission a detective drama about a vigilante killer in Cape Town.

Trackers

Trackers: Deon Meyer 2019 adaptation

The producer / distributor and local broadcaster M-Net have ordered a 5 x 50-minute adaptation of Deon Meyer’s 2004 bestseller Devil’s Peak from BBCS label Lookout Point and Francis Hopkinson’s Expanded Media.

The show will air on M-Net in 2023, with MultiChoice distributing it in sub-Saharan Africa and BBCS taking rest-of-world rights.

Adapted by Matthew Orton (Operation Finale, Moon Knight), Devil’s Peak is set and filmed in Cape Town and follows a detective tasked with tracking down a vigilante killer, a father seeking justice after the murder of his son, and a mother willing to do anything to make a better life for herself and her daughter.

Orton exec produces alongside Lookout Point’s Laura Lankester (Gentleman Jack) and Expanded’s Hopkinson (Wallander, DCI Banks). M-Net’s exec producers are Yolisa Phahle, Allan Sperling and Jan du Plessis.

The producer is Johann Knobel (Bad Sisters, The Shadow Line) and Amy Jephta (Skemerdans, Barakat) is a writer and associate producer.

SHAMILLA MILLER HIGH RES

Shamilla Miller

Jozua Malherbe (Griekwastad, Justice Served) directs, and the South African cast includes Tarryn Wyngaard (Raised By Wolves, The Watch), Shamilla Miller (Blood & Water, Troy: Fall of a City), and Masasa Mbangeni (The Republic, Scandal).

Lankester said: “Matthew Orton has created an exhilarating, propulsive, contemporary adaptation of Deon Meyer’s work, alongside Amy Jephta, one of South Africa’s foremost screen talents.”

MultiChoice Group’s chief exec of general entertainment and connected video, Yolisa Phahle, added: “Not only is this an authentically South African story starring a South African cast, it is also filmed in our own backyard – benefiting several industries and economies beyond the television industry.”

MultiChoice distributed another Deon Meyer adaptation in 2019 called Trackers, co-produced by Scene24, Three River Studios, Helle Media, and Scribe Studios.

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