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Working Title Films have optioned film and TV rights to Rupert Callender’s memoir What Remains? Life, Death and the Human Art of Undertaking (Chelsea Green Publishing). Rights were acquired from Stephen Moore of the Kohner Agency on behalf of Chelsea Green Publishing.
What Remains?, first published in September 2022, explores Callender’s journey into his unexpected career as an undertaker, sharing his “radical, poignant and unflinchingly real story” that “challenges the way we think about life, death and the human experience”. Paperback publication is scheduled for October 2024 with a new cover designed by Matt Broughton.
The publisher says: “Unlike many traditional undertakers, Callender brings an outsider, ‘DIY’ ethos to his work, combined with the kinship and inspiration he found in rave culture, and with social outlaws and nonconformists. He has carried coffins across windswept beaches, sat in pubs with caskets on beer-stained tables, helped children fire flaming arrows into their father’s funeral pyre and turned modern occult rituals into performance art."
Callender said: “I am humbled that the producers of such giants as ‘The Big Lebowski’, ‘Fargo’ and ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ will be looking to dramatise my tragi-comic memoir. Expect laughter and weeping, not necessarily in that order."
Eliza Haun, director of rights for Chelsea Green Publishing added: “In What Remains?, Rupert has elevated the art of memoir and professional confessional to radical, fierce and heart-breaking heights. We are delighted at the possibility that his story could be brought to our screens.”