John Morayniss’ Blink49 Studios andSex EducationEleven is currently working on a series adaptation by M.L. Rio’s novelIf We Were Villains.
The suspenseful thriller, set in an exclusive arts conservatory in London, has been sold over 180,000 times since its publication in 2017. It is also available in 14 other languages.
If We Were VillainsSeven young Shakespearean actors are following their careers at an elite college, where rivalry is intense, competition is fierce, and the line between art & life is very thin. Their final year is tumultuous, with one tragically ending their lives. The other faces their most difficult acting challenge: convincing the police (and themselves) that they are innocent.
Canada-headquarted Blink49 and the UK’s Eleven will co-produce, with Executive Producers Jamie Campbell executive producer and Jennifer Pick the co-executive producer for Eleven. Blink49 Studios executive producers Carolyn Newman and Virginia Rankin are joined by Rio, Tony-nominated Producer Christopher Maring from CM Stage Productions and Andrew Williamson, Henrik Meyer, and Enuka Okuma.
No writer is yet attached, and international distribution details haven’t yet been set.
Blink49, which former eOne TV chief Morayniss set up last year, currently has shows such as an adaptation of Marissa Stapley’s romantic drama Things To Do When It’s Rainingon its slate, while Eleven is lining up the likes of BBC, Sony and Stan co-proTen Pound Poms, about British families who began new lives in Australia in 1956 under the Australian government’s immigration scheme of the time.