Friday 17 July 2009

Newsy Stuff

ITN launches YouTube Book Club.

Publishers Penguin, Faber & Faber and Random House teamed up with ITN to create an online book club which is aimed at younger readers. More information about it can be found here.

European Prize for Literature

Henning Mankell is amongst 12 European authors that have been awarded the first ever European Union Prize for Literature. Mankell has accepted the role of Ambassador of the European Union Prize for Literature for the coming year. See here for more information.

New sci-fi thriller Paradox for the BBC

BBC1’s sci-fi thriller Paradox will be directed by Simon Cellan Jones (Generation Kill) and will star Tamzin Outhwaite. Clerkenwell Films has started pre-production on the 5 x 60-minute series which will star Outhwaite as DI Rebecca Flint who heads a special police force that investigates crimes committed in the future.

Filming in Manchester is due to start in June, although no other main roles have been filled. The series was created and written by Lizzie Mickery, who previously worked on The State Within and Messiah. Murray Ferguson, chief executive of producer Clerkenwell Films, said: “We’d love to be known as the indie that broadcasters can come to for inventive, high-quality drama.”

The series, being made by BBC Northern Ireland, was commissioned by Ben Stephenson, controller, BBC drama commissioning and will be produced by Marcus Wilson, who previously worked on Whitechapel. BBC Worldwide will distribute the series internationally. Stephenson said: “Paradox is a fresh spin on the crime genre for BBC1. Stopping crimes before they happen is a fantastically bold idea that allows us to tell edge of your seat thriller stories, whilst also weaving compelling moral and emotional questions about what happens when you try to change the future”.

Fire and Ice by Michael Ridpath

Corvus Books are to publish two books in a new series by international best-selling author Michael Ridpath. The first book in the series is called Fire and Ice and introduces readers to Magnus Jonson, an Iceland-born Boston-raised homicide detective. More information can be found here.

International Thriller Writers

The International Thriller Awards were recently awarded in New York. The results can be seen on the International Thriller Writers Website

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