Did you know that public and critics favorites such as Dexter, The Haunting of Hill House or Killing Eve are adapted from books? In an increasingly competitive ecosystem and a saturated content market, books and podcasts’ adaptations are the new eldorado. That is why Series Mania Forum offers industry professionals new opportunities to connect with literary agents and publishers.
Book to Screen is a pitching session that features 5 titles with high potential for an international TV series. This session is followed by a matchmaking moment to create new collaboration opportunities!
Selected projects:
THE WOMAN OF THE FAMILY CARBONARO written by Mario Giordano, Allemagne
Pina wants to rule. Anna wants to sing. Maria wants to wear pants. Three Sicilian women from three generations sit in a salon in the House of Time and tell their story of the Carbonaro family. From an archaic Sicily at the end of the 19th century to the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. As descendants of nymphs and sirens, they cast two shadows, that only women can see. Sad ghosts sit at their table, patruneddi in Italian – deceased people that cannot go, sullenly playing cards and asking for money with which they cannot do anything. Pina, Anna and Maria speak of miracles, unfulfilled dreams and unshakeable confidence. Of men, of love and violence. Of floating lemons and automobiles, of talismans, beautiful tailors and charlatans. They talk about being strangers in Sicily and Germany, about bombing nights in Munich and pop songs, and how happiness found them in between.
THE HALF BURNT HOUSE written by Alex North, Angleterre
Katie always prided herself on being a responsible big sister – until as teens she left her brother Chris alone for one selfish afternoon, and he was brutally attacked. He just survived the assault, but the physical and emotional scars run deep, and their relationship was destroyed. Years later, Katie has completely lost touch with Chris. Then she gets a call – from a detective. A body has been found in a sprawling mansion, half-ruined by a decades-old fire. Chris is the prime suspect. Katie knows this might be her last, best chance to save her brother. But she doesn’t realise that this isn’t the first murder – and so she doesn’t know how much danger she’s in… Meanwhile, Detective Laurence Page is facing a particularly gruesome crime. A distinguished professor of fate and free will has been brutally murdered just hours after firing his staff. All the leads point back to two old cases: the gruesome attack on teenager Christopher Shaw, and the despicable crimes of a notorious serial killer who, legend had it, could see the future.
STELLA written by Joseph Incardona, France
Stella Thibodeaux is a young woman living in a trailer, somewhere in Georgia. She is a prostitute by choice. Loyal, candid, she likes to welcome and love all kinds of men. Bobby, a man with a skin disease, has sex with her and his condition disappears. Then the same thing happens again and again: Stella can heal sick men through sex. It is a miracle. She is a saint. Bobby talks to his confessor, former Navy Seal veteran Father Brown. Brown talks to his superiors. The Vatican is overjoyed. Cardinal Carter brings the news to the pope, Simon II. Unfortunately, a little detail upsets the Holy Father: a saint prostitute is fine, after all there was already Mary Magdalene. But doing miracles through sex, well, that is too much. There is only one solution: to kill Stella, make her a martyr, and then re-tell her life in a more decent way. Back in the US, Cardinal Carter calls a gangster lady, Brenda Moore, who hires two killers to do the job: the Bronski brothers.
With humour and mischief, Joseph Incardona blurs the lines between good and evil, purity and vice, switching between pulp fiction and reflections on the meaning of life. But in the end, feminity and the body will triumph over violence and dogma.
AN ETHICAL GUIDE TO MURDER written by Jenny Morris, Royaume-Uni
Thea is drifting through life following the death of her parents. She spends her days working and spending time with her best friend, Ruth. But when Ruth is accidentally knocked to the ground by a man in a club, suffering a fatal head injury, something lurking within Thea is released. Thea realises that has the power to redistribute minutes, hours, months or years of life from one person to another. But despite deciding to use her ability for good, she can’t help but sometimes use it for her own benefit. Boss blagging her life at work? She can take some life from them and give it as a tip to her new masseuse for a job well done. But how can she know who to trust, and whether those she confides in have her best interests at heart? Who really is anyone behind closed doors? When it becomes clear that things are not morally just black and white, Thea has to face the question: can there be an ‘Ethical Guide to Murder’? Or is it just murder…
BOBBY NAZEBROQUE written by Paul Cluzet, France
What would you do if, every time you drank to forget your problems, the child you were when you were 10 appeared before you to call you to account? That’s what happens to the narrator of this novel, Robert, a young man of 29, a solitary alcoholic, a sort of contemporary Werther (minus the lyricism and plus the booze), whose life boils down to a long series of binge drinks. Unemployed, idle, ultra-sensitive and isolated, he shuns his friends to avoid their judgement. Including Bobby, his younger self, who begs him to remember his childhood dreams. Maybe not all of them, but at least those two: to be in love and happy. And Robert is in love, with Yaya. But their story, which keeps him sober, ends the day she tells him she suffers from a rare disease: she has no sense of touch. Ready to do anything to stay with Yaya, Robert goes on hunger strike to force a surgeon to mutilate him, in the hope that he too will be deprived of this precious sense…