Amblin takes on Parkin's 'secret game' for film

Amblin Partners has acquired the film rights to award-winning writer and journalist Simon Parkin’s forthcoming non-fiction book A Game of Birds and Wolves: The Secret Game That Won The War (Sceptre).

The book “unearths the true story of Operation Raspberry and the group of unlikely heroes – a rag-tag group of eight young women – whose eureka moment with a board game helped reinvent British naval strategy and turn the tide of the Second World War,” Sceptre said.

Producers Marc Platt and Jared LeBoff of Marc Platt Productions (“La La Land”, “Bridge of Spies”, “The Girl on the Train”) will produce, along with Amblin’s DreamWorks Pictures. DreamWorks Pictures is a film label of Amblin Partners, a film and television production company led by Steven Spielberg. The film rights were bought from Lucinda Prain at Casarotto, Ramsay & Associates on behalf of Jane Finigan at Lutyens & Rubinstein.

Writer Vicky Jones, whose credits include BBC hits "Killing Eve" and "Fleabag", will adapt the story for the screen.

A Game of Birds and Wolves is slated for publication in hardback, audio and e-book on 11th November 2019. Juliet Brooke, editorial director at Sceptre, pre-empted world english rights in July 2018 with Vanessa Mobley at Little, Brown US from Jane Finigan at Lutyens and Rubinstein.

Parkin is also a journalist and contributes to the NewYorker.com, the Guardian’s Long Read, and is a critic for the Observer. He writes regularly about gaming and video game culture.