Village Roadshow Adapting ‘The Athena Protocol’ All-Female Thriller Novel For Television

Denise Petski

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EXCLUSIVE: Village Roadshow Entertainment Group has acquired the rights to Shamim Sarif’s all-female YA thriller novel The Athena Protocol to develop as a television series.

The Athena Protocol features six female protagonists, led by Jessie, a hot-headed young agent at Athena, a top secret, socially-conscious vigilante organization focused on helping women and children worldwide. When Jessie breaks protocol and assassinates a target, she’s ousted from Athena just as her teammates set out to take down a human trafficker in Belgrade. Going rogue in order to prove herself, Jessie finds there’s no-one to watch her back as she gets closer to the horrifying truth behind the mission.

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Sarif will write the pilot and is attached to direct on the project. Along with her producing partner, Hanan Kattan, she will executive produce alongside Village Roadshow.

The book was published by HarperCollins in October to rave reviews, with a sequel, The Shadow Mission, coming in October 2020.

Sarif is an award-winning novelist, screenwriter and director for film and TV, whose three features as writer/director, Despite the Falling Snow, I Can’t Think Straight and The World Unseen, all produced by Kattan, have won 47 international awards. She is repped by Adam Peck of Synchronicity Management, lawyer Jeffrey Finkelstein of Del Shaw Moonves Tanaka Finkelstein & Lezcano and Emily Hayward-Whitlock at The Artists Partnership. Book rights are handled by Sophie Hicks in London.

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