EXCLUSIVE: The Mentalist actor Simon Baker, Bruna Papandrea‘s Made Up Stories and Australian agent-producer Lee-Ann Higgins are taking to adapt Emily Perkins’ novel ‘Lioness.’ The trio have optioned the hot book, which comes from bestselling Aotearoa New Zealand author Perkins and won the recent Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Baker, who took his first full TV series starring role since The Mentalist in Netflix’s Boy Swallows Universe earlier this year, will direct all episodes.
Papandrea, Steve Hutensky and Katie Amos will produce for Made Up Stories, along with Higgins, Baker and Perkins. Lioness follows Therese Thorne, a woman who has married a wealthy older man and built a successful career, but now finds a fraud investigation threatening her sense of loyalty as well as her reputation.
She faces a midlife reckoning about love and complicity, while being drawn to her neighbour, Claire, who offers an enticing, wild, but risky new approach to womanhood.
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