An announcement from Robert J. Sawyer:

I’m thrilled to announce that film rights to my 2012 novel Triggers have been optioned and that I’ve been commissioned to write the screenplay based on the book.

The book has been optioned by Copperheart Entertainment of Toronto, a company best known for the Ginger Snaps series of horror films and the science-fiction thriller Splice.

Copperheart is the same company that currently has Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern in development. Copperheart is also currently in post-production on Debug, an spaceship-based science-fiction movie directed by David Hewlett, and on Darknet, a horror TV series premiering in January 2014 on Canada’s Super Channel.

I’m working directly with Steven Hoban, the head of the company (who approached me about adapting my own novel), and Brian Morey, Copperheart’s head of development — and I’m having a blast.

Last week, we agreed on the beat-sheet treatment for the screenplay (an outline of the scenes that will appear in the script). Projected budget for Triggers is sixty million dollars — which, if it actually gets done, will make it the most expensive Canadian independent feature film ever produced.

Matt Kennedy of Vince Gerardis’s Created By in Los Angeles negotiated the very handsome deal for me, and I’ve been enjoying every minute of this project.