Bad Penny execs in Lunar launch

Two execs from the UK’s Bad Penny Productions have launched their own prodco and have picked up adaptation rights to Samantha Shannon’s fantasy novel The Bone Season.

Lunar Park has been founded by Bad Penny head of production Harriet Hammond and head of film Daz Spencer-Lovesey. It will focus on original dramas aimed at the direct-to-television and SVoD markets and is now developing The Bone Season for TV.

The novel, a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, is the first in a seven-book series. Set in a dystopian future, it sees a clairvoyant forced into a double life in the criminal underworld.

It has already been translated into 26 languages, with the TV adaptation set to be comprised of eight episodes. The adaptation rights were previously held by fellow UK prodco The Imaginarium.

The screenplay will be written by Shannon, who said her novels offer “rich opportunities for a long series like this one – there’s so much room for character development and expansion on the source material.”

She added: “It’s also very exciting to be able to re-approach the novels as a screenwriter. Once a book is out in the world, it’s essentially set in stone, but adapting The Bone Season for TV will allow me to explore the world in even more depth and consider the story from new angles. I’m looking forward to the journey.”

Hammond and Spencer-Lovesey have produced a number of feature films, including Mad to Be Normal, starring David Tennant and Michael Gambon; You, Me & Him; and, most recently, Waiting for Anya.

They are also in development on a movie based on Graham Greene’s The Captain & the Enemy.