Screen rights sold for Louise O’Neill thriller

Screen rights for Louise O’Neill’s book After the Silence, which was named the An Post Irish Crime Novel of the Year after its release in 2020, have gone to Tiger Aspect. The thriller revolves around the death of a young girl at at extravagant party and a documentary crew's attempts to uncover the truth 10 years later.

Rights were bought by Tiger Aspect, a Banijay UK company, from Emily Hayward-Whitlock at The Artists Partnership on behalf of Juliet Mushens at Mushens Entertainment. 

O’Neill said: “While writing After the Silence, I often thought how cinematic it was – the bleak beauty of a windswept island off the Irish coast, the structuring of the novel around a true crime documentary, and a complex, complicated female character at its heart. I’m delighted that Muirinn Lane Kelly, Lucy Bedford and Tiger Aspect Productions feel the same! I’m a huge fan of their work and I’m excited to see what they will do with this adaptation.”

Lucy Bedford, head of drama at Tiger Aspect, said: “I’ve always loved Louise’s novels, and it’s wonderful to be working with her on After the Silence. This feminist thriller challenges us to examine our obsession with true crime as entertainment, while also looking compassionately and unflinchingly at domestic abuse and coercive control. It is both bingeable and about something meaningful and profound. And it has the most brilliant twist at the end…”