Tim Winton’s Booker Prize shortlisted novel The Riders is being adapted into a feature film.
The novel, written in 1995, follows Australian expatriate Fred Scully as he anxiously awaits the landing of his wife and seven-year-old daughter at an international airport arrival gate. After living in Europe for two years, the family are finally settling down, and Fred sees a new life for them in a small cottage in the Irish countryside that he has renovated by hand.
But when the flight lands and the glass doors part, Scully’s life begins to go down in flames. And so begins an odyssey across Europe – a journey through the nightmarish underworld of the mind, heart, and soul of a man separated from the ones he loves by desperation, terror, and need.
The novel is a psychological suspense thriller, with themes, characters, and lyrically charged prose that will no doubt translate beautifully onto the screen. Tim Winton himself has confirmed this – ‘Of all my novels it always seemed to me that The Riders was by far the most cinematic, so this is very welcome news. With a screenwriter like David Kajganich and a producer like Ridley Scott, this could be a great adaptation and I look forward to seeing what they come up with.’
This exciting news comes as filming for Tim Winton’s 2002 novel Dirt Music begins in Western Australia this week, meaning that we can now look forward to two Tim Winton adaptations gracing our screens in the coming years.
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