With one production – last year's underperforming horror action comedy Slaughterhouse Rulez under their belts, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Miles Ketley are targeting a new big project for their Stolen Picture production company. The source material? Ben Aaronovitch's popular blend of metropolitan policing and magic, the Rivers Of London book series, which the author will have a hand in adapting for TV.
The Rivers kick off with police constable Peter Grant discovering that there is a hidden world of ghosts, wizards, creatures and criminals lurking just to the side of ordinary society. And, blessed with some magical abilities himself, he's soon assigned to a department that investigates such events and tackles a rising evil threatening everyone.
Frost tells Deadline that he read the first book while on holiday a few years ago, and jumped at the chance to option the series when it became available again. The current plan is for the first book to become series 1, and for subsequent books to combine for potential later series.
Aaronovitch, a veteran of shows such as Doctor Who, has seen his books optioned before, and has naturally been skeptical that they'll make it through development intact. "I’ve worked in television before so I was wary of sticking my head back into that lion’s den. It was a difficult thing to sell so that it wouldn’t get horribly butchered, and television up to now has had a lot of difficulties. But how could I say no? I feel confident on several levels. I’m working with creators and I know these people don’t like bollocks. There will be creative conflicts and where external forces force us to make compromises but I know that the starting point is that we won’t make those compromises unless we have to. Simon and Nick are tremendous nerds and I don’t have to explain things to do them about magic, they just get it. We have a common language, which we don’t have in a lot of TV companies."
Pegg agrees that it's important the author is involved. "Often as a writer, you are the absolute bottom of the food chain and treated like scum. As a writer, I understand what it’s like for someone to use you as a springboard rather than use your vision and it’s good to have writers involved as producers because they get it and we want to make a faithful adaptation that is a true reflection of the book."
It's still early days for this one, with no broadcasters or streaming services attached yet, but we can certainly see this one becoming an entertaining TV series.
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