Playwright Christopher Adams to Adapt Screenplay for Undiscovered LGBTQ Classic ‘Finistère’

Matt Donnelly
·2 min read

Playwright Christopher Adams has been tapped to pen a screenplay based on the novel “Finistère.”

While not widely known, the novel is a groundbreaking early tale of a gay man who falls in love with his tennis instructor at a French boarding school in the 1920s. It was written by Fritz Peters, whose entire catalogue was recently acquired by Hirsch Giovanni Entertainment.

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“Beyond his impressive curriculum vitae, what impressed us with Chris was his deep understanding of the novel and his passion to speak to modern audiences while honoring the text,” said producer and managing partner David M. Hirsch.

Adams is a noted English playwright who recently adapted the limited series “Aubade” for FilmNation. That series is based on a controversial 1957 queer Northern Irish novel.

“Finistère” was published in 1951, and sold over 350,000 copies. It was praised by major critics such as Gore Vidal, who wrote that author Peters “created a fine and passionate novel. It is almost as if two of those idealized youths in Plato’s ‘Symposium’ had for one brilliant moment come alive again in a sunlit beach near the land’s end of Europe.”

Adams is a PhD candidate specializing in queer publishing history at the Institute of English Studies in London.

“I first came across Fritz Peters’ masterpiece while researching the publishing history of gay novels. I was surprised to learn that ‘Finistère’ was a best-seller in its day, influential to an entire generation of gay men, but had fallen into obscurity,” Adams said, adding that the book was “evocative, and its scope is so ambitious: class, sexuality, American and French identity, divorce, adolescence, binational relationships.”

Hirsch Giovanni Entertainment is an L.A.-based content company with scripted, unscripted and publishing projects. It was founded in 2019 by Hirsch and Giovanni J. Guidotti, CEO of Giovanni Cosmetics, Inc.

Adams is repped by Alex Rush at U.K.-based Independent Talent Group.

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