The Hive in development with Magpie Pictures

Blake Ayshford, Mireille Juchau, Lois Randall, Rebecca Ingram, Angela Betzien.

NSW-based Magpie Pictures (Grace Beside Me) has secured the rights to Mireille Juchau’s award winning novel The World Without Us and is currently adapting it into a 6 x 1 hour drama series The Hive.

The 2016 book is a tale of ecological disaster and a family bound together by a terrible, mysterious absence.

The Hive is described as a “vivid multi-layered mystery drama and story of survival, as a mother and daughter break free from secrets and scars that have silenced and constrained them. The story unfolds in the fictional town of Bidgalong, in the lush, rolling hills of Northern NSW – a community marked by the existence – and subsequent loss – of the Hive commune in a fire thirteen years ago.”

Angela Betzien (Total Control) will be lead writer, working with Blake Ayshford (Fighting Season) as story producer and writer on the series.

With development funding support from Screen NSW, Magpie Pictures has just embarked on an intensive writer’s room in Sydney to further develop the series, which has already attracted U.K interest when pitched at Content London 2019.

“We are thrilled to have such an exceptionally talented and dynamic writing team to transform this beautiful story into an exciting high-end series for the small screen,” says Magpie Pictures Producer Lois Randall.

“It is a visually stunning portrayal of a collision of worlds that is rarely explored on screen. A powerfully timely series, it speaks to audiences who enjoy sophisticated high-end dramas with unapologetic, complex characters and stories set in unique worlds. Mireille Juchau is such an extraordinary writer and has captured this intriguing world and characters so authentically in her novel.”

A broadcaster is yet to be announced.

Magpie Pictures has an ambitious slate of projects in development, including the gritty, fresh series Dog Box (development supported by Screen NSW and Screen Australia), as well as continuing its joint venture with Dena Curtis’ company Inkey Media on the high-end crime drama Silt. Magpie is also developing Tata Detective with Taryne Laffar’s company Pink Pepper. Both projects have received development support from the Indigenous department of Screen Australia. Magpie Pictures’ slate also includes two Lawrence Johnson films, Once A Queen (developed with the assistance of Screen Australia) and Love Me Tender (developed with the assistance of the Indigenous department of Screen Australia).