‘Operation Mincemeat,’ ‘Riviera’ Producer Archery Acquires TV Rights to Ned Beauman’s ‘Venomous Lumpsucker’

Archery Pictures, the U.K. film and TV production company behind the recent WWII drama Operation Mincemeat and shows including Fate: The Winx Saga and Riviera, has acquired the TV rights to Ned Beauman’s upcoming novel Venomous Lumpsucker.

The dark comedy, due for release in the U.K. (Sceptre) and U.S. (Soho Press) in July, is set in a dystopian near future ravaged by climate change and where tens of thousands of species are going extinct every year. A whole industry has sprung up around their extinctions, to help preserve the remnants, or just assuage guilt (depending how you look at it). Humanity’s last hope is the biobanks, impregnable vaults where the DNA of every organisms can be preserved forever. One day, however, an audacious cyberattack obliterates them in their entirety. In the aftermath, a troubled conservationist and a crooked mining exec must team up in search of the venomous lumpsucker, a lost fish that they both desperately need to save.

“Venomous Lumpsucker is a hilarious and thrilling ride and the more the story unravels the stranger things become,” said Archery CEO Kris Thykier. “It’s about environmental collapse, corporate greed and humanity’s complex relationship with nature. It’s a bold, offbeat and somewhat absurd story, and it couldn’t be more timely. Ned Beauman is a genius, and we couldn’t be more excited to be developing his masterpiece.”

Venomous Lumpsucker is the fifth novel from Beauman, a multi award-winning British journalist and novelist. Beauman has been nominated for several prizes, including the Booker and Desmond Elliot prize and has won a number of honors, including the Somerset Maugham Award.

“When I finished this novel, I thought to myself, ‘Well, I’m proud of this, it’s just a shame that I have no hope of selling the TV rights, because it’s much too weird and also, it’s called Venomous Lumpsucker,’” said Beauman “Thank you to Archery for proving me wrong. And I’m especially happy to have them take it on because I’ve been working with them on something else, so I already know they’re really good.”