Blue Ant’s Saloon options horror novel A Cosmology of Monsters, taps Caitlin Fryers

Blue Ant Media’s Toronto-based prodco Saloon Media has optioned the rights to adapt American author Shaun Hamill’s debut novel A Cosmology of Monsters.

Melissa Williamson

The family-based horror novel, released in 2019, is being adapted as an 8×60’ series, with Caitlin D Fryers (Wynonna Earp, Private Eyes) set to work on the series as creator and executive producer.

The novel follows the Turners, a family surrounded by supernatural forces, who construct an immersive haunted-house attraction. As they navigate the challenges of staying in business, adolescence and keeping the family together, they realise that there are real monsters at their door.

Fryers, who wrote on all four seasons of supernatural Western horror series Wynonna Earp, is executive producing the adaptation alongside Saloon Media’s senior VP of scripted content Melissa Williamson and MD Michael Kot, and author Hamill.

Saloon Media made its name as a factual specialist, producing series including 9/11 Kids (CBC), Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer (Amazon Prime Video), See No Evil (Investigation Discovery US), Drag Race Canada (Crave for Bell Media) and Life Below Zero Canada (Blue Ant Media, BBC Worldwide).

More recently, the company has looked to expand into scripted, with former Entertainment One exec Williamson leading the way.

Last year, it partnered with London-based producer and financier StoryFirst on the 8×60’ drama Ghost Walk for Blue Ant-owned pay TV channel T+E. The series follows a vivacious, aspiring Canadian actress and a prickly British scientist who together become unlikely paranormal investigators, travelling from the English city of York to rural Canada to hunt ghosts.

“We’ve been looking for an elevated family drama. The fact this one has a horror twist was a major plus,” she Williamson. “This adaptation is a great representation of the type of noisy, bold, dramatic series we’re looking for.”