Jeffrey Archer
Courtesy of Broosk Saib/The Jeffrey Archer Company
The best-selling British novelist Jeffrey Archer is set to have his work adapted for film and television across foreign-language territories, with an initial focus on viewers in India, the rest of Asia, and the Middle East.
The millionaire author, known for stories such as Kane and Abel – a trilogy being developed in collaboration with Eleven and Sony Television International, as was recently announced – and the Clifton Chronicles, has sold more than 275 million copies of his books worldwide and topped the Sunday Times bestseller list 27 times.
On Wednesday, the Jeffery Archer Co. and the London-based Dream Bay Entertainment (DBE), co-founded in 2023 by ex-Amazon executive Thomas Drachkovitch, said they have partnered to bring Archer’s stories to the screen.
Jason Hafford, a former agent in CAA’s Global TV Department, has recently been unveiled as co-founder and head of DBE management.
The team-up is “thrilling” as India and the Middle East are “two of the fastest-growing entertainment markets in the world,” Drachkovitch said. “Our aim is to leverage local partnerships and expertise that honor Jeffrey’s works while ensuring these stories are culturally relevant and authentically adapted to the highest standard.”
After publishing the hit Kane and Abel, Archer penned First Among Equals, the story of a quartet of British Parliament members vying to become Prime Minister, which drew on his own experience in politics.
Caught up in a libel case against the U.K.’s Daily Star tabloid in 1987, Archer was charged with perjury and perverting the cause of justice 13 years after the trial and was sentenced to four years in jail, of which he served two. He later wrote the Prison Diaries, a series of three books following his incarceration.
He has previously accused India’s billion-dollar Bollywood industry of plagiarism when asked about how his books could translate into Hollywood films in 2015. Archer said in an interview with India’s DNA Newspaper in 2015: “Well, forget Hollywood, just look at your Bollywood! These bunch of thieves have stolen several of my books without so much as a ‘by your leave’.”
