‘Fosse/Verdon’ Writer & Director Adapt Kate Summerscale Novel ‘The Haunting Of Alma Fielding’ Into TV Series For New Pics

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EXCLUSIVE: Catherine The Great and Des producer New Pictures has signed up two of the creative talents behind FX’s Emmy-winning limited drama Fosse/Verdon to adapt Kate Summerscale’s novel The Haunting of Alma Fielding into a TV series.

Fosse/Verdon writer Charlotte Stoudt and director Minkie Spiro, who has also helmed The Plot Against America and Downton Abbey, have set to work in translating the true ghost story for the screen.

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In 1938, young housewife Alma Fielding begins to experience supernatural events in her suburban home. Objects shatter, vanish, or take flight, assaulting Fielding and her family. Reporters see it with their own eyes. It is impossible but it is happening. And Alma seems to be at the center.

Jewish-Hungarian refugee Nandor Fodor investigates the events, determined to figure out if it is a hoax, a ghost, or Alma’s unconscious mind wrestling with a buried secret in the shadow of rising fascism across Europe.

Summerscale researched the novel meticulously and it was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize after it was published last year. All3Media-owned New Pictures acquired the TV rights from Julia Kreitman at The Agency, in association with Georgia Garrett at Rogers, Coleridge and White.

Summerscale is best known for her bestselling book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, which was adapted into an ITV drama by Hat Trick Productions in 2011, with Paddy Considine and Olivia Colman starring.

The Haunting of Alma Fielding will be executive produced by New Pictures CEO Willow Grylls alongside Stoudt and Spiro. New Pics recently made David Tennant serial killer series Des for ITV, while another of its ITV dramas, White House Farm, was picked up by HBO Max last year.

New Pics is currently producing a second season of political thriller Cobra for Sky and is adapting P.D. James’ Inspector Dalgliesh Mysteries crime novels for Channel 5 and Acorn TV, with Bertie Carvel attached. It is also making an ITV series on British serial killer Peter Sutcliffe.

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