EXCLUSIVE: Here’s a project that’s likely to generate plenty of buzz globally: Studiocanal is reuniting the BAFTA-winning and Oscar-nominated team behind Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy to adapt spy author Dave Hutchinson’s Fractured Europe Sequence novels into a major television series.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy writer Peter Straughan and director Tomas Alfredson will turn the best-selling novels into an eight-part series, titled Europa, which will be co-produced by Seven Stories, the All3Media-owned production company founded by Girl With A Pearl Earring producer Anand Tucker.
Hutchinson has written four Fractured Europe Sequence books since 2014. The series is set in a near-future Europe, which has splintered into countless tiny nation-states after being ravaged by a pandemic and economic decay.
In the first book, Europe In Autumn, Rudi, a chef based out of a small restaurant in Krakow, Poland, is drawn into a new career with Les Coureurs des Bois, a shadowy organization that will move anything across any state line for a price. Soon, Rudi is in a world of high-risk smuggling operations, where kidnappings and double-crossing are as natural as a map that constantly redraws itself.
Alfredson said: “Europa is a unique blend of classic spy novel and mind bending science fiction. Set in the not too distant future, in a world that for the most part looks and feels very much like our world today, the story offers a rich and thrilling allegory for our contemporary times.”
Tucker said the series has been a “passion” since founding Seven Stories in 2015, while Studiocanal EVP of global production Ron Halpern added: “We had been hoping for many years to find the right project to work together again on with Peter and Tomas. We have now found it in the series adaptation of Dave Hutchinson’s terrific near future espionage thrillers.”
Europa will be executive produced by Tucker, Colleen Woodcock, Robyn Slovo, Straughan, and Alfredson. Studiocanal is distributing internationally. The Fractured Europe Sequence series is published by Solaris, an imprint of Rebellion. The rights deal for the book was brokered by Luke Speed of Curtis Brown Group on behalf of Alexander Cochran of C&W Agency.
Cold War spy thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy premiered in 2011 and was based on John le Carré’s novel of the same name. It starred the likes of Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, and Tom Hardy, and scooped best British film at the BAFTAs, as well as best adapted screenplay.