Gaumont, maker of Lupin and Narcos, is set to adapt interactive Isklander game trilogy for TV. Gaumont’s UK arm has secured a deal with London-based immersive entertainment company Swamp Motel to option the film and TV rights to their sleuthing alternate reality adventure series.
The three-part interactive game series comprising Plymouth Point, The Mermaid’s Tongue and The Kindling Hour invites players to unleash their inner online detective as they enter a world of corporate deceit, occult horrors, and shadowy cabals to uncover the twists and turns of a murky underworld deep within high society.
The trilogy, which stars actor Dominic Monaghan, has been played by over 60,000 people across the UK and the US since the first instalment, Plymouth Point, launched in April 2020.
Whilst the Isklander trilogy in its current form has been designed as an at home, online experience for two – six players, plans to adapt the story for a multi-part drama series for TV are now underway. The drama development is led by executive producer Alison Jackson (Tin Star, Ashes to Ashes, Hunted), who also helms Gaumont’s UK growing London-based division, and Gaumont UK’s Senior Development Exec Jamie Jackson.
Isklander was created by Swamp Motel writers, co-founders and creative directors Ollie Jones and Clem Garritty. Both creative associates of Punchdrunk and co-founders of the critically acclaimed comedy theatre company Kill the Beast, they created Plymouth Point initially in response to the closures of entertainment and theatre spaces across the world last year.
Gaumont UK CEO and executive producer Alison Jackson said: “From the moment our senior development executive Jamie Jackson played the first of the Iskander trilogy and recommended it to the team, we could see it’s potential for adaptation. A breathtakingly paced thriller, with a fascinating conspiracy and heart stopping twists at its centre. It feels exactly the sort of show we’re all desperate to watch at the moment.”
The Isklander series follows a secret society with ties to big money and an international network who will go to any lengths to protect their supremacy. The stories blur fiction and reality, with the very real London Stone at the centre of the race against the clock. Hunting for ancient artefacts linked to this underworld, players work with various characters across the Isklander series to bring down the organisation from the inside.
“There is so much scope to delve deeper into the world we’ve created and its characters” say Swamp Motel’s Clem Garritty and Ollie Jones. “We see transmedia narratives as the really exciting future of original IPs and we’re passionate about their development and the impact of storytelling on each platform.”
Gaumont UK was launched to produce original British drama for the global market. Led by Executive Producer and CEO Alison Jackson, Gaumont UK has several projects in development for terrestrial channels and the streaming market. Gaumont UK recently produced the third series of Sky Atlantic’s Tim Roth drama Tin Star, which Jackson executive produced, alongside Kudos.
Jon Creamer
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