‘Yesterday’ & ‘Poldark’ Producers Team For TV Adaptation Of Iain Banks Thriller ‘The Business’

EXCLUSIVE: Yesterday producer Matthew James Wilkinson is teaming up with Poldark and Endeavour exec producer Tom Mullens on a TV adaptation of Scottish author Iain Banks’ thriller novel The Business.

The project marks the latest foray into TV for Wilkinson’s Stigma Films, which is ramping up a TV slate that also includes Steven Knight’s Two Tone drama in development with Kudos.

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The Business follows Kate Telman, a working-class Glaswegian who has risen through the ranks to become a senior executive in a secretive super-corporation, known only as The Business. Telman discovers that The Business is planning to buy a small country in order to secure a seat on the UN and that, despite the benevolent image and democratic structure it presents to the world, the company will stop at nothing to increase its influence. So begins a dangerous personal reckoning as Telman travels the globe from Scotland to the Swiss Alps, the American Midwest, Pakistan and the Himalayas, determined to uncover the conspiracy at the heart of the shady company she works for.

The idea is to shoot on location in several international cities.

The deal was brokered by Luke Speed at the Curtis Brown Group on behalf of the Literary Estate of Iain Banks.

The series is the first collaboration between Mullens and Wilkinson, who will work together on Stigma’s slate of TV projects.

Mullens and Wilkinson said: “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to adapt Iain Banks’ wickedly satirical The Business for television. As relevant today as when it was first published, we look forward to honouring Iain’s work with a powerful, entertaining thriller.”

Mullens is currently producing ITV thriller series Our House , which will star Martin Compston, Tuppence Middleton and Rupert Penry- Jones.

Wilkinson, who is currently in production on a Sky Original, recently produced Netflix acquisition CURS>R. Previous credits include box office hit Yesterday, which was made with Working Title.

Prolific Scottish author Banks, who passed in 2013, was best known for thrillers and science fiction novels including The Wasp Factory and Consider Phlebas, the first in his successful ‘Culture’ series.

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