Ruby Entertainment has optioned the dramatic film and television rights for Clare Wright's The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka.
The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, which won the $50,000 Stella prize earlier this year, sheds light on the story of the women of the 1854 Eureka Rebellion.
Wright’s award-winning study of the women who made the rebellion is one of Australia’s foundation legends and took ten years of research and writing.
The women of Eureka were central to the working, family and cultural life of the goldfields, and instrumental in the creation of the Eureka Flag.
The flag was hoisted above the diggings on December 1, 1854, by rebellious miners, in defiance of the police and the British military garrison.
Two days later, a military assault on the makeshift ‘Eureka Stockade’ resulted in a short but bloody battle where more than 30 people were killed.
In the tent city of the Ballarat diggings one could find rebel Irish, fugitive negro slaves, Californian adventurers, industrious Chinese, European peasants and merchants, as well as local indigenous peoples.
It was a multicultural melting pot, and it was bound together by a community of spirited, dynamic women.
Now, Ruby Entertainment will help bring Wright's book to the screen.