Compact Pictures Options Rachelle Atallas Acclaimed Debut Novel The Pharmacist (EXCLU

Posted by Reinaldo Massengill on Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Following the completion of its first feature film, Aylin Tezel’s “Falling Into Place” – which Global Screen has just acquired for sale at Cannes – Glasgow-based emerging indie Compact Pictures has optioned “The Pharmacist” for development. The novel, the debut by Scots-Egyptian author Rachelle Atalla, was chosen as a Sunday Times Book of the Week and nominated for the Scottish National Book Award.

Laura McBride from Compact Pictures originally identified the book as a perfect story for the company. The project is moving into development with Atalla attached to adapt for the screen, with Compact hoping to secure interest in the film during its first outing to next week’s Cannes Film Market.

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“The Pharmacist,” hailed as a compulsive and wonderfully compassionate read, is a female-led, psychological story about bunker-dwelling survivors in a post-nuclear world. Wolfe is the bunker’s pharmacist, doling out medicine under the watchful eye of an increasingly erratic and paranoid leader. When the leader starts to ask things of her, favours she can hardly say no to, it seems her luck is running out. Forming unlikely alliances, she is forced to navigate the powder keg of life underground where one misstep will light the fuse. The walls that keep her safe also have her trapped.

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John McKay, CEO and lead producer at Compact Pictures, said: “’The Pharmacist’ is a stand-out novel and will make an atmospheric, claustrophobic adaptation – in the lo-fi, speculative vein of ‘Children of Men,’ but with a strong female perspective. We are thrilled to be working directly with Rachelle; she is a charismatic, original and dynamic storytelling voice with striking and timely things to say about women, their bodies and the politics of control. Her story also has some uniquely British DNA, and it’s no coincidence that she has been compared to George Orwell. Even though it’s early days, we have high hopes for this project: the story is exceptionally strong, and it readily opens itself to diverse casting and distinctive visual styling.”

Atalla added: “I am delighted to be working with John, Laura and the team at Compact to bring my first novel to the screen. Even though we are just getting started, they have an incredible vision for my work and it’s an exciting prospect for me to turn the book into a screenplay and then see it come alive on screen.”

Compact Pictures optioned the book through Atalla’s agent, Nick Marston at Curtis Brown. Atalla is a graduate of Chris Young’s renowned Skye Film program and Write4Film. Her second novel, “Thirsty Animals,” has just been published by Hodder and Stoughton to critical acclaim.

In addition to having recently completed “Falling Into Place,” a co-production with Weydemann Bros, Compact Pictures’ other current feature projects include James Ley’s sparkling gay romcom, “Lovesong to Lavender Menace,” which has just been selected for Inside Out 2023, the finance forum in Toronto, and “Spyglass,” an original family action feature from YA author David Solomons (“Not Another Happy Ending”). Compact Pictures also has a growing slate of TV drama, including “The Hum,” an eight-part, sophisticated, high-concept thriller created by writer James Mavor (“Reichenbacj Falls”).

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