In a competitive situation, Academy Award® Winning banner Vendôme Pictures (CODA) announced that they have optioned the film and television rights to John Vaillant’s non-fiction book Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World.
Following a hugely successful release in June 2023, Fire Weather won the prestigious Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, was a Finalist for the 2023 National Book Award, andwas named a best book of the year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Financial Times, and The Guardian, among many other prominent publications.
With Fire Weather, John Vaillant puts us on the front lines of an epic conflagration in gripping, cinematic detail. Halfway through the hottest year of the hottest decade in recorded history, a new kind of fire introduced itself to the world.
The multi-billion-dollar disaster in Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier, melted vehicles, turned houses into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from the city in a single afternoon.
It was the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina. Fire Weather meticulously chronicles the events leading to this inevitable collision between fire and humankind.
Vendôme’s Philippe Rousselet said: “The idea of addressing climate change by focusing on one of the most consequential fires in North America made this story uniquely captivating and impeccably suited to Vendome’s taste.
John’s recounting of this pivotal disaster is not only gripping and exhilarating but also portrays a poignant human narrative that prompts us all to contemplate the future of our planet.”
Fire Weather John Vaillant said: “”The chance to work with a team that understands – personally and viscerally- the growing threat of climate-driven urban fire is rare and exciting, and the potential of film to convey the intensity of these events is virtually limitless.”
Known to uniquely explore collisions between human ambition and the natural world through his fiction and non-fiction work, John Vaillant is an internationally bestselling author.
His first book, The Golden Spruce (Norton, 2005), won the Governor General’s Award and his second nonfiction book, The Tiger (Knopf, 2010), won the B.C. Achievement Award for Non-Fiction, was a bestseller selected for Canada Reads, and has been publid in 16 languages.
In 2015, he publid his first work of fiction,The Jaguar’s Children(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), which was long listed for the Dublin IMPAC and Kirkus Fiction Prizes and was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
Most recently, Fire Weather (Knopf, 2023) became a #1 national bestseller in Canada, and in addition to winning the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and being a finalist for the National Book Award, was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize (Canada) and was included among the New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2023.
The deal was brokered by Sloss Eckhouse Dasti Haynes Law Co LLP on behalf of Vendôme, and by CAA and the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency on behalf of John Vaillant.
Vendôme is best known for producing CODA which won three Oscars at the 2022 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The company is currently in pre-production on Andrew Niccol’s Lords of War starring Academy award-winner Nicolas Cage and Bill Skarsgård, the follow-up to the critically acclaimed cult classic, Lord Of War.
The Academy Award®-winning studio has also recently acquired the remake rights to produce a scripted adaption of the award-winning human rights documentary A Fire Within. In addition, Vendôme Pictures and Pathé are working with Tony Award®-winning Deaf West Theatre to develop the stage musical adaptation of CODA and Ibelin which will be directed by Morten Tyldum.