Dutch Producer Submarine Options Pair of Best-Selling Books

Submarine has optioned the rights to two best-selling books from journalists Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz that it is planning to develop as a TV series entitled Proliferation.

Proliferation is the story of how a seemingly unexceptional Pakistani engineer Abdul Khan rose from obscurity to bring the nuclear bomb to his home country, ultimately becoming a major player in the spread of nuclear weapons to Libya, North Korea and Iran. It is based on The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World’s Most Dangerous Secrets…and How We Could Have Stopped Him and Fallout: The True Story of the CIA’s Secret War on Nuclear Trafficking.

The series is being developed as a political spy thriller about a nuclear trafficking group with an international story spanning the U.S., Europe and the Middle East.

Femke Wolting, co-founder and managing director of Submarine, said: “While Abdul Khan’s life and story may be in the past, it could not be more relevant today. The political landscape we exist in was profoundly shaped by the proliferation that Khan unleashed, and this story is a cautionary tale of how isolated conflicts between nations can spill out on an international scale.”