Brouhaha Entertainment has taken the film rights to Charlotte Wood’s novel The Weekend.
The 2019 book, published by Allen & Unwin, follows three friends for one last, life-changing long weekend, during a subtropical Sydney Christmas. As they declutter the beach home belonging to the fourth member of their quartet, who died the previous year, there is an escalating sense of tension as frustrations and secrets bubble to the surface.
The Weekend won the Australian Book Industry Award for the Literary Fiction Book of the Year and was also shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award. The book has also been translated into six languages and is published in the UK, US, France, Poland, Italy, and Germany.
The Sydney and London-based Brouhaha Entertainment is a recently-formed production company between Troy Lum, Andrew Mason and British producer Gabriella Tana, who was nominated for an Oscar for Philomena.
When the company launched last year, Lum told IF it aimed to make Australian content that “has universal appeal and the ability to cross borders internationally”.
“Then working with the highest-graded Australian talent we can get our hands on.”
Other projects on its slate include upcoming Netflix series Boy Swallows Universe, as well as Karim Aïnouz’s Firebrand; Kate Dennis’ All That I Am, based on the novel by Anna Funder; Lee Tamahori’s The Convert, due to star Guy Pearce; feature biopic Lee, about the iconic photographer Lee Miller, to be played by Kate Winslet; Richard E. Grant’s Majesty and Patrick Dickinson’s Cottontail.
In a statement, Tana said the company was thrilled to work with Charlotte and her novel.
“It’s so rich and resonant, its characters so beautifully realised, that they have stayed with me. With such stellar source material, the cinematic possibilities are boundless – and it feels like it could be an important film too; its universal themes, rare emotional resonance and, above all, its humanity, make it something that should be shared as widely as possible in times like these,” she said.
Wood said she had been moved by Tana’s “perceptive enthusiasm” for her novel, noting her own excitement had grown by the producer’s “ambitious and imaginative” approach.
“To combine Gaby’s extraordinary prowess and renown with those of Troy Lum and Andrew Mason has created a staggeringly talented international producing dream team and their collaboration has already vastly broadened the creative scope and potential for this film.”
Wood’s other work includes novels such as The Natural Way of Things, which won both the Stella Prize and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction and was optioned in 2016 by Katia Nizic and Emma Dockery, Animal People and The Children.