Bruna Papandrea’s Made Up Stories Adapting Author Fiona McIntosh’s ‘The Pearl Thief’ As Film; ‘One Life’ Screenwriter Nick Drake Attached
EXCLUSIVE: Bruna Papandrea’s Made Up Stories has teamed with producer Monica Saunders-Weinberg to adapt Fiona McIntosh’s novel The Pearl Thief as a feature film. One Life screenwriter Nick Drake is attached to write.
The Pearl Thief is billed as a sweeping, epic story love and betrayal set between 1939 and the early 1960s. Saunders-Weinberg acquired the rights and took the project to Nine Perfect Strangers maker Made Up Stories, which then attached Drake to the project.
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Synopsis reads: “The stakes are high in this gripping novel set between the city of Prague and its snowy woodlands on the cusp of World War II, and later in the streets of Paris, London, and the heather-covered moors of Yorkshire in 1963.”
The plot will follow Katerina, a museum curator determined to overcome the trauma of her past and avenge the pain inflicted upon those she loved and those she’ll never know. “A lot of the story is set during World War II, but it is ultimately a very redemptive and hopeful story with a woman who was a Holocaust survivor at the center of it,” Papandrea told Deadline. “So often these movies and TV shows are told through the male lens of war, but rarely do we get a glimpse into a complex female heroine’s journey.”
Papandrea and Steve Hutensky will produce for Made Up Stories, with Saunders-Weinberg producing for Hana Black Productions.
This marks the second collaboration between Made Up Stories and Saunders-Weinberg following the upcoming feature Addition. Saunders-Weinberg is the co-owner and Deputy Chair of Australia-U.S. real estate investment firm The Terrace Tower Group and leads social impact initiative The Growth Project as a founding partner. She is also the lead producer on 44 – The unOfficial unSanctioned Obama Musical alongside Eli Bauman.
“As the daughter of a Holocaust survivor I feel compelled to the ensure stories of heroism, resilience and triumph from this time are told and live on,” said Saunders-Weinberg. “I was so incredibly moved when reading Fiona McIntosh’s The Pearl Thief that the story could not end when the book finished. It’s an honor for me to have the rights to this story and I am thrilled to be doing this alongside the visionary Bruna Papandrea at Made Up Stories and Nick Drake. It’s the perfect fit and timing — the world we are in right now needs this more than ever.”
Novelist and historian McIntosh was born in the UK but resides in Australia. Her other novels include The Tea Gardens, The French Promise and The Lavender Keeper, and her Detective Jack Hawkworth crime series has been optioned for television.
She said: “As a writer it’s both thrilling and tense at once when a film is being made of your novel – will they convey the emotion of the character’s painful journey? To have a titan of the screen industry in Bruna Papandrea’s Made Up Stories team, together with the passion of Hana Black Production’s Monica Saunders-Weinberg and her deeply felt commitment to The Pearl Thief, I know these two strong women understand Katerina. Her story is in very good hands.”
Drake co-wrote the Anthony Hopkins-starring feature One Life alongside Lucinda Coxon and penned the screenplay for Romulus My Father, which starred Eric Bana and Kodi Smit-McPhee. His plays include All the Angels, which ran at London’s Globe Theatre and Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin. He was also a development exec in the 1990s working with the likes of Terrence Malick, Anthony Minghella and Michael Apted on films such as Hilary and Jackie, The Quiet American and Enigma.
Made Up Stories remains on a charge, with the second season of HBO’s Nine Perfect Strangers currently filming and Marcelle Lunam’s feature debut Addition in post-production. It is also working on The Last Anniversary, the Australian series for streamer Binge that marks Papandrea’s latest collaboration with Nicola Kidman and Per Saari’s Blossom Films and Fifth Season and is set to go into production on season 2 of Australia magazine drama Strife. In March, we revealed it had sold an untitled thriller package written by Natalie Krinsky, starring and produced by Kim Kardashian, and reported Peacock had picked up limited series The Good Daughter, starring Jessica Biel.
Other Made Up Stories shows of recent years include Netflix’s Pieces of Her, starring Toni Collette and Anatomy of a Scandal starring Sienna Miller and Michelle Dockery; Roar for Apple TV+, starring Nicole Kidman, Cynthia Erivo, Merritt Wever and Alison Brie; Spectrum Originals women’s basketball drama Long Slow Exhale; and genre-bending romantic comedy Wolf Like Me starring Isla Fisher and Josh Gad that premiered a second season in October.
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