Harriet Walker's debut The New Girl optioned for film

Times fashion editor Harriet Walker’s debut novel The New Girl has been optioned for a film by Simon Friend Entertainment.

Penguin Random House imprint Ballantine picked up the book in late 2018 in a six-figure pre-empt deal, with Hodder and Stoughton announcing they had bagged UK rights in May.

Walker’s debut, which is not released in the UK and US until May 2020, is set in the world of high fashion. It is a tale of friendship, ambition and insecurity triggered by a woman hiring her maternity cover.

Simon Friend Entertainment m.d. Simon Friend optioned film rights for the book from Zoe Ross at United Agents.

He told The Bookseller: “What attracted me to it is the story’s pertinence for women who are wanting to have children and how painful but effectively communicated that struggle is in the book.

“At the same time it’s an enormously compelling psychological thriller with meaty and complex leading roles, where the antagonist is the protagonist’s neurosis.”

Walker said of the deal: “Simon has such exciting ambitions and vision for a film of The New Girl.  I'm thrilled that my characters will have the chance to live on screen as well as the page, and can't wait to begin the process of re-imagining them there.”

Friend, who has an extensive background in theatre, founded his company in 2015. Its recent projects include “The Starry Messenger” with Matthew Broderick and Elizabeth McGovern at Wyndham’s Theatre.

The company has just wrapped filming on its first movie, “The Father", starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman, which is due out next year.