Fremantle brings Coelho to screen

FremantleMedia is pushing further into high-end scripted content through an exclusive deal with best-selling Brazilian author Paulo Coelho to develop the first drama series based on his work.

Paulo Coelho

FremantleMedia North America (FMNA) will work with Fremantle-owned producers Random House Studio, which it bought in 2016, and UK-based Dancing Ledge Productions to explore plots and characters from Coelho’s novels The Devil & Miss Prym, Brida and The Witch of Portobello.

The result will be a crime thriller series, yet to be titled, that follows a young priest who is ostracised from the church, on the run from the law and hunted by a powerful crime family.

Coelho is best known as the author of The Alchemist, which has sold more than 200 million copies worldwide, has been translated into more than 80 languages and remains a New York Times bestseller 25 years after its initial publication.

His collective works have earned him the accolade of being one of the best-selling authors in history and his social media presence – with more than 29 million followers on Facebook and 15 million on Twitter – has allowed him to further connect with his readers.

Executive producing the forthcoming series will be the multi-Emmy-, Golden Globe- and Bafta-winning team of FMNA’s Dante Di Loreto, Random House Studio’s Peter Gethers and Dancing Ledge Productions’ Laurence Bowen.

FremantleMedia made its first foray into high-end drama in 2013 with German spy drama Deutschland 83 and has since invested in a slew of international drama producers.

As well as FremantleMedia’s global in-house drama producers, companies such as Miso Film in Scandinavia, Abot Hameiri in Israel, Dancing Ledge in the UK, Fontaram and Kwai in France, Wildside in Italy, Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It TV in the UK and Easy Tiger in Australia all sit within the FremantleMedia drama family.

It has enjoyed recent success with American Gods on Starz and Sky/HBO coproduction The Young Pope. Forthcoming projects include the adaptation of Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North and the re-imagining of Picnic At Hanging Rock, the timeless Australian novel by Joan Lindsay.