EXCLUSIVE: Catherine the great and Of Producer New Pictures has recruited two of the creative talents behind FX’s limited Emmy-winning drama Fosse / Verdon to adapt the novel by Kate Summerscale The Haunting of Alma Fielding in a television series.
Fosse / Verdon writer Charlotte Stoudt and director Minkie Spiro, who also directed The plot against America and Downton abbey, set to work translating the real ghost story for the screen.
In 1938, the young housewife Alma Fielding began to experience supernatural events in her suburban home. The objects shatter, disappear or take flight, attacking Fielding and his family. Journalists see it with their own eyes. It’s impossible, but it happens. And Alma seems to be in the center.
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Jewish-Hungarian refugee Nandor Fodor investigates the events, determined to determine if it is a hoax, a ghost or the unconscious of Alma struggling with a secret buried in the shadow of the growing fascism across Europe.
Summerscale has meticulously studied the novel and it was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize after its publication last year. New Pictures, owned by All3Media, acquired the TV rights to Julia Kreitman from The Agency, in association with Georgia Garrett at Rogers, Coleridge and White.
Summerscale is best known for her bestselling book Mr. Whicher’s suspicions, which was adapted into an ITV drama by Hat Trick Productions in 2011, starring Paddy Considine and Olivia Colman.
The Haunting of Alma Fielding will be produced by New Pictures CEO Willow Grylls alongside Stoudt and Spiro. New Pics recently directed David Tennant’s serial killer series Of for ITV, while another of his ITV dramas, White House Farm, was picked up by HBO Max last year.
New Pics is currently producing a second season of political thriller Cobra for Sky and fits PD James’ Inspector Dalgliesh Mysteries detective novels for Channel 5 and Acorn TV, with Bertie Carvel attached. He is also directing an ITV series on British serial killer Peter Sutcliffe.
