Gunpowder & Sky Acquires Suspense Novel ‘Here Lies Daniel Tate’

Gunpowder & Sky has acquired the rights to Cristin Terrill’s award-winning suspense novel Here Lies Daniel Tate to develop into a feature film. They are also partnering with screenwriters Nora Kletter (Queen Sized) and Grainne Belluomo to adapt the book but are changing the protagonist from male to female.

The logline: When 10-year-old Danielle Tate goes missing from one of California’s most elite communities, and left no trace. She simply vanished. Six years later, when she resurfaces on a snowy street in Vancouver, she’s no longer the same girl. Her sandy hair is darker, the freckles are gone, and she’s initially too traumatized to speak, but she’s alive. Her overjoyed family brings her home to a world of luxury and comfort she can barely remember. In time, they assure her, she’ll recover her memories; all that matters now is they’re together again. It’s perfect. A miracle. Except for one thing. She isn’t Danielle Tate.

“We are beyond excited to bring Cristin Terrill’s novel, ‘Here Lies Daniel Tate’, to life,” said Kletter. “In our telling, Daniel has become Danielle or “Dani” because we feel young women’s concerns and traumas are too often questioned, minimized and overlooked. By re-imagining our protagonist as a teenage girl, we are able to explore how a young woman can become her own advocate, and even solve her own murder.”

This news follows a series of acquisitions by Gunpowder & Sky: the children’s novel, Ms. Bixby’s Last Day (partnering with Walden media to develop a feature film); Alex Ross Perry’s Her Smell, starring Elisabeth Moss (they have domestic rights); and Shrimp for Zelda Williams to adapt her short film into a series.

Most recently, the company announced a partnership with Oscar-nominated Charlie Wachtel and David Rabinowitz (BlacKkKlansman, nominated for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay) to develop Madness, a new drama series about the world of college basketball. The company is also partnered with Tigerlily Productions to develop a new comedy series entitled Assets, about five women “laying bare the dark and hilarious secrets of the world of corporate banking.”

Terrill is repped by Jim McCarthy of Dystel, Goderich & Bourret for publishing and Pouya Shahbazian of New Leaf Literary & Media for film & television.