NBCUIS swings Pendulum, climbs Trees

NBCUniversal International Studios (NBCUIS) has optioned rights to a crime thriller by author Adam Hamdy and a sci-fi graphic novel about aliens, with both titles being adapted for TV by the production company co-created by actor Tom Hardy.

Adam Hamdy

Pendulum is being developed by Hamdy and London-based prodco Hardy Son & Baker, with whom NBCUniversal International Studios has a first look deal.

Hamdy will also serve as executive producer on the adaptation of the novel, which will publish later this year and explores a serial killer.

Meanwhile Trees, from comic book writer Warren Ellis and illustrator Jason Howard, is set on earth 10 years after the arrival of aliens, which appear as inanimate objects and exert strange pressures on communities without communicating.

Tom Coan, senior VP of scripted programming at NBCUIS, said: “Warren is one of the top names in comics and a best-selling author who has a terrifically subversive perspective on story.

“It’s that unique sensibility that sits at the heart of Trees, where he has turned the alien invasion genre on its ear. In addition to being inventive, Trees is simultaneously epic and intimate; a combination that lends itself very well to international television.”

The deal was negotiated by Ellis and Howard’s representatives, Angela Cheng Caplan of Cheng Caplan Company and attorney Joel VanderKloot of Nelson Davis LLP. Trees is published by Image Comics.

Ellis is behind novels including Fell, Gun Machine and the Crooked Little Vein while movie Red is based on his graphic novel of the same name.

Hardy formed Hardy Son & Baker with partner Dean Baker in 2012 and is in post-production on Taboo for BBC1 and FX Networks, which is being co-produced by with Scott Free Productions.