Producer Sarah Brocklehurst’s Brock Media has optioned the rights to Caleb Azumah Nelson’s Small Worlds to be adapted for television. 
 

The purchase involved Brock Media ‘fighting off multiple bidders’ according to BBC Studios, with whom it has a partnership deal. 
 

Small Worlds – due out in May – is set in London and Ghana across three summers, and follows Nelson’s award-winning, best-selling debut novel Open Water. Nelson himself will write the script. 
 

Brocklehurst, whose credits include The Outrun, Animals and Black Pond, said: “Small Worlds is a contemporary masterpiece; thrilling, urgent and full of heart. I had such a strong emotional response to the book so it’s an honour to have been entrusted with bringing it to the screen. Caleb is an incredible writer and I have no doubt that Small Worlds will become an exceptional piece of television.”
 

Nelson added: “I’m so excited to be working with Brock Media to bring Small Worlds to the screen. Sarah and her team have showed such energy and enthusiasm towards the book and the emotional response has been palpable. For a novel that is so deeply personal, that is concerned with the community I come from and who have made me who I am today, I’m grateful to have such an invested partner.”
 

Brock Media’s recent credits include The Outrun, adapted from Amy Liptrot’s memoir and starring Saoirse Ronan. 
 

Caleb Azumah Nelson image credit: Stuart Ruel.