Compact Pictures Options Rachelle Atalla’s Acclaimed Debut Novel ‘The Pharmacist’ (EXCLUSIVE)
variety.comLeo Barraclough International Features Editor 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. “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.
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