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Exclusive: UK production company Wild Nest Pictures has secured screen rights to Jon Ransom’s debut novel The Whale Tattoo, which last week won a Polari prize, one of the UK’s premier awards for LGBTQ+ literature.

Wild Nest, headed by actor Tom Brittney (Grantchester) and actor-writer Oliver Powell (Devs) are developing the adaptation, with Ransom set to pen the script and Brittney eyeing the project as his feature directorial debut.

The Whale Tattoo follows Joe who returns to the small Norfolk fishing town where he grew up to confront the past. Haunted by death, trauma and unfulfilled love, he soon learns the disturbing truth about the river running alongside the house his estranged father still lives in.

“Jon is a brilliant new voice in queer literature. His writing is incredibly evocative, raw and steeped in atmosphere. We’re excited to help him bring Joe’s story of grief and forgiveness to life,...

Exclusive: Grantchester and Greyhound star Tom Brittney’s Wild Nest Pictures is teaming up with Trevor Birney’s Belfast-based production company Fine Point Films (Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God) to develop a TV drama based on the controversial 2018 arrests of Birney and fellow Northern Irish journalist Barry McCaffrey.

The two men had investigated the unsolved massacre of six innocent men by Loyalist paramilitaries at a small rural pub in the village of Loughinisland in 1994.

The drama will follow the events of 2012, when McCaffery and Birney were working with Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney (Enron) and Fine Point Films on No Stone Unturned, a documentary based on the massacre, when they anonymously received unredacted police files that would help them prove collusion between the police and the killers. After the release of the film, McCaffery and Birney were arrested in an unlawful police operation for alleged theft of...

Exclusive: Grantchester actor Tom Brittney, who will next be seen alongside Tom Hanks in WWII war movie Greyhound, has partnered with actor and writer Oliver Powell (Devs) to form TV and film production company Wild Nest Pictures.

The London-based company has acquired the rights to The Mayfair 100 novels, penned by Lynn Brittney, and have teamed with Patrick Melrose outfit Little Island Productions to develop the adaptation. Set in World War I, the books explore a covert female task force who uncover a series of dark and gruesome crimes in London.

Rising UK actor Brittney said: “I’ve been keen to contribute more directly to the constantly evolving landscape of TV & film for some time. Wild Nest is my way to do that. Ollie and I have created the company to bring untold stories to the screen from fresh and dynamic perspectives. We’re aiming to champion brave storytellers telling character driven narratives.