Motive Pictures to adapt Gary Stevenson’s Trading Game memoir for TV

The Trading Game charts Stevenson’s rise from the East End to the top of Citibank

Fifth Season-backed UK production company Motive Pictures is developing Gary Stevenson’s best-selling autobiography The Trading Game for television.

The book will be adapted as a limited series by screenwriter Gregory Burke, a former economics student himself, who was previously behind Atomic, Rebus and ’71.

The autobiography charts Stevenson’s rise from the streets of East London to becoming the top trader in the world for Citibank, and his subsequent descent into depression as he fought to escape the golden handcuffs he found himself trapped in.

The development deal comes after a string of international series launches for Motive Pictures including The Woman in the Wall for BBC One and Showtime, One Night for Paramount+ and upcoming series Get Millie Black for Channel 4 and HBO, and a newly announced greenlit project for Prime Video with director Guy Ritchie, Young Sherlock.

Executive producers Lila Rawlings and Simon Maxwell, and development executive Sam Ferguson will lead on The Trading Game.

The deal was negotiated by Lesley Thorne of Aitken Alexander Associates Ltd on behalf of Stevenson and his literary agent Chris Wellbelove. Burke is repped by Casarotto Ramsay & Associates.