London – The Ink Factory has acquired the rights to Andrew Michael Hurley’s ‘Devil’s Day’ for adaptation into a television series. Hurley’s work has won him numerous accolades and his debut novel ‘The Loney’ was hailed by the legendary Stephen King as ‘an amazing piece of fiction’.
Hurley’s follow up to ‘The Loney’, ‘Devil’s Day’ is a claustrophobic supernatural tale that speaks of the visceral ties of family, of superstition and mythology, and of the dark power of landscape. Located in a tiny hamlet on the Lancashire moors, and told in the present while also reaching deep into the past, the novel follows John Pentecost and his newly pregnant wife Kat who have returned to John’s family farm to mourn the loss of his grandfather. Their arrival coincides with the ritual of Devil’s Day, a potent ceremony which holds a dark significance for the tight-knit community and belies centuries of secrets and superstitions. As John and Kat are drawn into fermenting local tensions, and become entangled in buried horrors and haunted pasts, they feel a deep, violent undertow that suggests the Devil himself may be amongst them.
Andrew Michael Hurley “I’m absolutely delighted to be working on the screen adaptation of Devil’s Day with The Ink Factory. From the first meeting, it was clear that their vision of the relationship between the valley, moorland and the characters matched my own.”
Emma Broughton, Head of Development at The Ink Factory: “‘Andrew’s stunning novel offers extraordinary potential for adaptation: its beguiling, complex characters, compulsive narrative, and extraordinary evocation of landscape, match absolutely, in sensibility and ambition, our commitment to create brilliant, bold, and thrilling drama.”
Andrew’s debut novel, ‘The Loney’ won the Costa First Novel Award and the British Book Awards Book of the Year, has been sold in twenty territories, and sold over 150,000 copies across all formats in the UK. A feature film is currently in development with Film4, with Ink Factory’s The Night Manager writer, David Farr, adapting.
The deal was brokered by Luke Speed of Curtis Brown Group on behalf of Lucy Luck of C+W Literary Agency. Published by John Murray on the 19th of October, the rights are sold to HMH in the US and in Germany, Holland, France, Italy, Brazil and Finland so far.
