EXCLUSIVE: The Crown producer Left Bank is swapping the royal family for the world of hedge funds and artificial intelligence with its latest project – an adaptation of Robert Harris’ The Fear Index.
Deadline understands that the project is being lined up for British pay-broadcaster Sky and discussions are underway with the Comcast-backed company with a view to turning the book into a four-part drama.
Sony-owned Left Bank is the latest producer to give The Fear Index a crack; nine years ago Fox 2000 and Chernin Entertainment teamed on a deal for the film rights to the book, which was first published in 2011, with Paul Greengrass attached to direct.
The book, which was published by Penguin Random House, is set on May 6 2010, the date of the British general election and the 36-minute flash crash, the trillion-dollar stock market crash. Set in the office of Hoffmann Investment Technologies, a fictional hedge fund in Geneva, it follows founder Dr. Alex Hoffmann, an American expat physicist, who stays out of the public spotlight, but within the secretive inner circles of the ultra-rich he is a legend.
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He has now developed a revolutionary form of artificial intelligence that predicts movements in the financial markets with uncanny accuracy. As a result, his hedge fund is poised to make billions. But one morning before dawn, a sinister intruder breaches the elaborate security of his lakeside mansion. So begins a waking nightmare of paranoia and violence as Hoffmann attempts, with increasing desperation, to discover who is trying to destroy him.
Deadline understands that The Musketeers creator Adrian Hodges, who also wrote on HBO’s Rome, rising writer Caroline Bartleet, who has penned short films starring Jodie Whittaker and Vicky McClure, and Broadchurch writer Paul Andrew Williams are writing the adaptation.
It is the latest book adaptation for Left Bank; the company is developing an adaptation of Paul Sussman’s archeological thriller novels The Khalifa Mysteries with The Watch writer Simon Allen and a remake of Sarah Pinborough’s psychological thriller Behind Her Eyes, which has been ordered by Netflix.
Left Bank’s next series is Quiz, following the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? cheating scandal, which debuts on AMC and ITV this spring. It previously worked with Sky on action drama Strike Back.