Renny Wijeyamohan and Sonia Whiteman, creators of ABC vertical series The Disposables, have been selected to take part in the 2024 Series Mania Writers Campus for their new project Scalpel.
Held at the Creative Bazaar and Series Mania Forum in Lille from March 15 – 21, the campus will consist of 16 television writers from across the globe coming together for one week to develop their projects under the guidance of Series Mania founder Laurence Herszberg, impact producer Isabelle Lindberg Pechou and script editor Ludo Smolski.
Participants have the opportunity to meet showrunners and producers during masterclasses and networking events, before presenting their projects as part of a pitching session in front of industry members. Previous special guests have included Ron Leshem (Euphoria), Bryan Elsley (Skins), Amit Cohen (No Man’s Land), Eli Horowitz (Homecoming), and Sarah Treem (The Affair).
Scalpel follows a promising young Tamil-Australian surgeon, Nishan, who risks everything he’s worked for when he’s forced to become an underworld “doctor-for-hire” after his delinquent cousin is gunned down in a gangland shooting.
It’s one of the multiple projects Wijeyamohan and Whiteman have in development, having met in 2019 through The Disposables producer Karen Radzyner.
Whiteman told IF the idea to take part in the campus had been borne out of submitting The Disposables for Series Mania.
“We were thinking that if we did end up going to Series Mania with The Disposables, it would be really great if we could do this writers’ campus at the same time, so Renny and I applied for that as well,” she said.
“We were very lucky and excited to be selected for that.”
Wijeyamohan said they had only been working on Scalpel, a 6 x 1-hour series concept, since the end of last year, after being inspired by a story from his own family, who emigrated to Australia from Sri Lanka in the early 1980s.
“One of the core themes is about the inequity of opportunity and how the circumstances of life can determine trajectories,” he said.
“That is explored through the relationship between the two main characters, Nishan, who is this promising young surgeon, and his delinquent cousin, Siv who is gunned down during a botched gangland robbery.”
Series Mania will run March 15 – 22 in Lille, France.