Playground & Wiip To Adapt Emma Jane Unsworth’s Novel ‘Adults’ For Television

Peter White

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Adults, Emma Jane Unsworth’s follow-up novel to Animals, is set to be adapted for television after Playground and wiip partnered to option the screen rights.

The Howards End and Wolf Hall producer, run by Colin Callender, and the Dickinson studio, run by Paul Lee, are to adapt the series with Unsworth, Callender, Lee and Nne Ebong exec producing.

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Unsworth will adapt her own book, which was published in the UK via Harper Collins in January and will be released in the U.S. in May via Simon and Schuster.

This comes after Unsworth adapted her first book Animals with Holliday Grainger and Alia Shawkat starring, directed by Sophie Hyde and produced by Sarah Brocklehurst. The feature film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival.

Adults follows Jenny, a woman in her thirties who has completely lost touch with herself. She’s just been dumped, she’s failing at work, losing her friends and now her body has let her down too. Instead of any meaningful relationship, columnist Jenny dedicates all of her time to maintaining the picture-perfect digital persona taking her online anxiety to a whole new level. Jenny is forced to put down her phone and reevaluate the complicated relationships with the mother, her friend, and most importantly, herself. Deliciously candid and gloriously heartfelt, Adults is the story of one woman learning how to fall back in love with her life. It’s a sharp, witty and achingly relatable portrait of a modern woman coming to the realization that she doesn’t have to go at it alone.

Unsworth said she is looking to create something “bold” and “different”. “I think the mid-thirties are a very specific time for women. I personally had a huge identity crisis. Adults is about a woman who needs to fall back in love with her life. She needs to fall back in love with her mother, her friends, her body, and her – disappointing, failed, awful, messy – self. That’s the beating heart of the story. I want to make women laugh, cringe, get angry, stick a flag in their desires, and feel solidarity,” she added.

Callender said Unsworth was “one of the most exciting young voices in contemporary literature”. “Her wit, authentic storytelling and unique perspective are exceptional, and we look forward to working closely with her to bring her insightful and timely novel to the screen,” he added.

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