Studiocanal Launches Literary Adaptations Label & Promotes SVP Sarah Reese Geffroy To Run It – Updated

Jesse Whittock and Max Goldbart
·2 min read

UPDATE 8 AM PT: Studiocanal has now unveiled Sara Reese Geffroy as SVP of its nascent Studiocanal Stories label and TV series development.

She will run the French major’s new literary adaptations division, which was unveiled earlier today, while also supervising the development of Studiocanal TV series. She has held the VP Development TV series role for the past three years.

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Geffroy will start on May 1 and report into new Studiocanal TV boss M-K Kennedy and Ron Halpern, EVP Global Production and Talent Management.

Studiocanal CEO Anna Marsh said Geffroy’s “knowledge of the sales and production roles, as well as her trusted relationships with the production companies which form part of the Studiocanal ecosystem, are major assets to achieve our ambitions in the franchise and adaptations market.”

PREVIOUS: Studiocanal is pushing further into TV and film adaptations of literary IP.

The Canal+-owned company has launched Studiocanal Stories, two years after it launched a division dedicated to literary adaptations. Management will be announced “very soon.”

Details on the new unit were scant, but Studiocanal pointed to data that shows 42% of the top 100 U.S box office hits in 2023 were literary adaptations, and that in France TV and film adaptations of literary works had increased almost 30% between 2015 and 2021.

Studiocanal is no stranger to the adaptations business, of course, with two upcoming Cannes Official Competition selections — Gilles Lellouche’s Beating Hearts and Michel Hazanavicius’ The Most Precious of Cargoes both based on literature.

Further back it has adapted several major literary IPs as series, including the BBC series War of the Worlds and Ridley Road, Harlan Coben novel The Stranger and films including Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy and A Boy Called Christmas. Most notably, the development Paddington film franchise can be traced back to books on the iconic bear character.

Studiocanal is currently working on the likes Miffy, which is based on preschool books from Dick Bruna; TV series Playing Nice, based on JP Delaney’s book; and feature How to Stop Time, which was originally from author Matt Haig.

On the International front, the likes of Universal International Studios, Banijay and All3Media have all been pushing heavily into literary adaptations over recent weeks, with agents reporting a hot market for buzzy novels.

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