By The Book

Jane Marlow hears from leading producers and distributors about the science, and art, of adapting book properties.

As platforms and content providers continue to mushroom worldwide, it’s not just the clamor for content that gets louder—the clamor for breakout hits also increases. Waiting for scriptwriters to come up with original ideas can be risky, so where better to look for inspiration than the tried-and-true hits of the literary world?

And you can’t find material much more reliable than that of author Ken Follett. Rola Bauer, the head of U.S. TV production and co-production at STUDIOCANAL and CEO of TANDEM Productions, who established a relationship with the author on The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End, has now optioned another Follett hit, Code to Zero. The action in the novel takes place in 1958, but Bauer says they will contemporize the story in the show.

“We wanted to take it out of the Cold War and the space race between the U.S. and the Soviets and bring it into a contemporary time frame that reflects the change in technology,” explains Bauer. “We feel Code to Zero has a true relevance today.”

Sarah Doole, FremantleMedia’s director of global drama, says that traditionally British television has relied heavily on books, in part because it’s a territory with a strong literary tradition. “Now we’re entering a different world in which those classic adaptations are really important,” says Doole, whose drama slate includes adaptations of Daphne Du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn, Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Anne Holt’s Vik/Stubo crime novels. “But it’s about how you can tell that story in a new way for a contemporary audience.”

LITERARY CLASSICS
As classics go, there aren’t many more challenging than Leo Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace. With a recent Franco-Italian version still sitting on some broadcasters’ shelves, Ben Donald, executive producer of international drama at BBC Worldwide, says one of the biggest challenges to creating the new BBC version was ensuring it was both relevant and different from previous incarnations.

“The classic adaptation is a subset of the overall question about the use of books as a basis for TV series,” explains Donald. “A classic is a very specific thing. Broadcasters either do or don’t want one. I think there’s been a bit of a trend against classic adaptation, particularly as public-service broadcasters try to reinvent themselves for a younger audience. It’s perceived to be slightly old-fashioned. But I think that you can do it in a not-old-fashioned way, and writer Andrew Davies and director Tom Harper have pulled that off in War & Peace. It’s hard to convince people of that when it’s just a script in the co-pro phase.”

With sales in 153 territories, ITV Studios Global Entertainment’s (ITVS GE) new spin on Winston Graham’s classic Poldark is evidence that historical novels still do good business if they’re given the right spin. Ruth Clarke, executive VP of global content strategy and investments, attributes the success of Mammoth Screen’s production of Poldark to the fact that the story lines were updated and are relatable to a modern audience. With Agatha Christie’s Marple and Poirot in the ITVS GE catalogue, Clarke believes that literary adaptations have always been part of the TV landscape. “They have a built-in audience. There’s a known brand there,” says Clarke, using Poirot as an example. “When we launched the end of Poirot, we had Agatha Christie’s grandson with us, and that was fantastic. People were really drawn into being able to meet part of the [author’s] family. That real-life, tangible attachment to the author was really interesting for us.”

Brand recognition is an important part of the appeal of novel adaptations across the board, but as BBC Worldwide’s Donald points out, “One country’s classic is another country’s obscure author.”

NAME DROPPING
In the case of Hat Trick International’s Doctor Thorne, an ITV commission, the brand recognition may lie more with the person doing the adapting—Julian Fellowes—than with the author, Anthony Trollope, who wrote the book in the 1850s. “Julian Fellowes made costume drama a global phenomenon with Gosford Park and then Downton Abbey,” says Sarah Tong, the director of sales at Hat Trick International. “With Doctor Thorne, he is introducing global audiences to one of his favorite writers, Trollope. This isn’t your standard costume drama. It’s fresh and not overly reverential.”

Tong also has the three-part drama The Secret, based on Deric Henderson’s novel Let This Be Our Secret, on her slate. She says that the predictability of a well-known brand for a broadcaster is like casting a big-name star in the lead of a movie.

That could make an author like Norwegian crime writer Anne Holt the literary equivalent of Jennifer Lawrence. FremantleMedia International has brought Modus, made by Miso Film and based on Holt’s crime novels, to the market. Doole acknowledges the value of working with such a high-profile author. “Crime is the best-selling genre in international TV,” she notes. “If you’ve got a strongly plotted, well-characterized crime novel, then that’s a really important piece of IP, because usually that can be turned into great television.”

Doole adds that modern audiences are looking for a higher degree of authenticity. “In Modus, Stockholm looks so beautiful and is almost a character within the story,” she says. “In all the best crime novels, the place is usually a character. You couldn’t imagine Inspector Morse not set in Oxford. I think that sense of place is really important.”

Crime might be a law unto itself, but BBC Worldwide’s Donald says that one of the pitfalls of adaptation is assuming that book sales automatically translate into audiences. “You’ve still got to make something original for TV,” he says. “The readers will only be a proportion of the people you’re trying to make the show appeal to.”

FANNING FANDOM
In the case of Robert Kirkman’s Outcast, which had a graphic novel that rolled out ahead of the TV series, the fans are paramount, says Sharon Tal Yguado, the executive VP of global programming at FOX International Studios, which is backing the new show. “We always start with the superfans, the evangelists, the people who know the source material and will watch the show, and then we broaden it.”

Of the millions of people who watch The Walking Dead, based on a graphic-novel series by Kirkman and broadcast internationally on FOX, Yguado expects that less than 10 percent will have read the source material.

Using a comic book as source material means that in addition to the stories, there is a wealth of visual references that a showrunner and director can tap into. “Adam Wingard directed the pilot episode [of Outcast] and was very much inspired by the comic books—the muted colors, the cinematic sensibility,” explains Yguado. “The comic books were the storyboards for the show. At a lot of the locations we went to, he would look for specific elements that would make the superfans go crazy.”

Yguado has also acquired the rights to The Fix, Declan Hill’s nonfiction book about match fixing in the world of soccer, and The Prop, Pete Hautman’s novel about a female poker player.

A well-researched nonfiction book provides information that gives the drama project a solid backbone. “We could have gotten that information in other ways,” says Yguado about The Fix. “We could have talked to people, but it’s a relatively easy way to tap into that knowledge. And when you do have that source material, it legitimizes the project even more. There are so many development projects out there, it shows that this is something that has gravity.”

Yguado believes adaptations are also a good way to engage topflight screenwriters. “There are very talented writers out there, but sometimes they run out of ideas,” she says. “If you get high-profile source material, it’s easier to attach a high-profile writer. Writers get excited about these materials. Other­wise you have to wait for them to knock on your door.”

The degree to which authors are involved with the TV transformation varies from project to project.

STUDIOCANAL’s Bauer says of working with Ken Follett: “We want him to be happy about what we’re doing. The happier he is, the more ensconced in the process he is, the better it’s going to be when we start getting the show into production and start promoting it. Ken Follett is a very social-media savvy man. With The Pillars of the Earth we set him up on Facebook and Twitter [to promote the adaptation]. He launched into it and he is brilliant at it. It’s incredibly beneficial if you have someone who is active on social media.”

Holt was also supportive of the dramatization of her novels in Modus. “I’m deeply impressed,” says Holt of the series, not only by “how the universe and my thoughts that went into writing the book have been recreated, but also by the way the writers saw opportunities to strengthen the story for TV.”

One of the newest entrants into the business of delivering original drama is Amazon. For the world’s largest bookseller, ordering Bosch, based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling series of crime novels, was perhaps a no-brainer. Henrik Bastin, the CEO of Red Arrow Entertainment Group’s Fabrik Entertainment and producer of Bosch, says that when he first started inquiring about the rights to the novels, they had just been released after having been tied up at Paramount for many years. Anticipating a bidding war, Bastin’s approach was to convey his creative vision for the show to Connelly himself, which was what won him the rights to the series.

“We made a handshake deal that Michael would always be a part of it if he wanted to,” Bastin says. “I really wanted him to be in, and he really wanted to. He’s been writing episodes and has been on set almost every day.”

A FRESH LOOK
Like STUDIOCANAL’s Code to Zero, there was some updating to be done with the Bosch franchise, which first appeared on the shelves in 1992. But changes were more about updating Harry Bosch’s history and setting rather than the kind of man he was conceived as. “Michael said from the beginning that he wanted to protect the DNA of Harry Bosch: who he is, how he acts,” says Bastin. “Michael wanted to make sure that people who have read his books for a number of years recognized Harry Bosch and the world he inhabits.”

If novel adaptations are seen as a way of mitigating risk in an expensive, high-stakes genre, forming relationships with agents and authors is an essential part of the job.

Doole says she benefits from the fact that FremantleMedia is part of Bertelsmann, which also includes Penguin Random House. “We have a meeting with them every month—they join our development sessions,” says Doole. “I’m interested in what trends are coming through from them as publishers. We also have great relationships with Pan Macmillan. I have two people within my team working nearly full time on that.”

Producers and distributors might be getting more organized about the ways in which they go after rights, but BBC Worldwide’s Donald thinks the interest in “buzzy books” has always been intense. “All producers have very strong relationships with agents to ensure that they’re on the submission round and get a call when something’s at manuscript stage,” says Donald.

He goes on to add: “What has changed is the appeal of a tele­vision adaptation over film. Notoriously, lots of rights were tied up in film contracts and the films never got made. I think now you can make a pitch to an author that a TV series or a serial is a good or arguably better exploitation than a film, which might not get made. Things have to be massively condensed when they reach the screen, so sometimes a TV series or serial can allow the book to breathe.”

Pictured: BBC Worldwide’s War & Peace.