Wednesday round-up: Latest news, deals & hires

Rubicon snags Sister Bells trilogy

Banijay’s Norwegian prodco Rubicon TV has landed exclusive rights to Lars Mytting’s The Sister Bells trilogy, commencing with The Bell in the Lake.

The novel is described as a sweeping love story and supernatural thriller, set in a remote 19th-century mountain community. Development is now underway to adapt the title for screen.

The trilogy spans 65 years across Norway, Germany, and the UK, and has sold widely across North America and Europe. The novels blend magical realism, historical detail, and emotional depth, with a tug-of-love triangle between a priest, an architect, and a striking contemporary woman.

See-Saw picks up Forrest’s Father Figure

Mediawan-owned See-Saw Films has optioned Emma Forrest’s upcoming novel Father Figure.

The book will be adapted for TV by See-Saw’s Fanboy banner run by Patrick Walters, and follows the label’s hit series Sweetpea for Sky Atlantic

Father Figure is a coming-of-age thriller that is set to be published on 3 July with Weidenfeld & Nicolson, an imprint of Orion Publishing Group. It tracks a troubled scholarship student at the exclusive girls’ school Saint Saviours.

Executive producers for the series will be Walters, Helen Gregory, Iain Canning, Emile Sherman and Emma Forrest.

HBO Max among early buyers for Mark Gatiss’s Bookish

Global streamer HBO Max is among the buyers to have acquired forthcoming UKTV irreverent period detective drama Bookish.

The streamer has taken the Mark Gatiss-created series for Australia, alongside the Nordic PSBs DR (Denmark, SVT (Sweden), YLE (Finland).

Other buyers include Spain’s Filmin, AXN WHITE for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and LTV for Latvia. Eagle Eye-produced Bookish, which has been recommissioned ahead of its UK launch on 16 July, centres on witty and whip-smart bookshop owner Gabriel Book (Gatiss) who is helping the police to solve the most uncrackable crimes.

Happy Accidents hires Sonar alum

Nascent US deficit-financing film and TV studio Happy Accidents has hired Louise Oliver as senior vice-president of international sales to build on a raft of European film sales.

Louise Oliver, who has 17 years’ distribution experience selling high-profile series including Taboo and Das Boot, joins as Happy Accidents unveiled acquisitions by Sky UK, RAI, TV2 (Norway), Network4 (Hungary) and DIVA in CEE for 19 film titles including A Christmas Less Travelled, Barcelona Mi Amor, A Pie to Die For and The Ainsley McGregor Mysteries.