Cineflix Rights signs financing & development deal with Dragonet and Synchronicity

Shankari Chandran

UK distributor Cineflix Rights has signed a development and financing deal with Scotland’s Synchronicity Films and Australia’s Dragonet Films to develop a drama series based on Shankari Chandran’s novel Song Of The Sun God.

The London-based company has joined the 6 x 60-minute project as a creative and financing partner and has taken first option on exclusive global distribution.

The series is described as a “a contemporary emotional thriller that explores the loves, lies, and misdemeanours spanning three generations of a close-knit Sri Lankan family, whose story is inextricably entangled in their country’s three-decade-long civil war.”

The story takes place in the UK, Australia, and Sri Lanka, and unfolds from the perspective of Leela, a young woman living her life in London, largely disconnected from her own culture and unaware of long-held family secrets. An intensely personal and dangerous journey takes her across three continents to find her lost aunt and uncover the shocking reason for her disappearance.

The novel is being adapted for television by screenwriter Olivia Hetreed (Girl With A Pearl Earring) and executive produced by Claire Mundell for Synchronicity Films and Karen Radzyner for Dragonet Films.

“Song Of The Sun God is an immensely powerful novel exploring universal themes of familial love, tension, and redemption arising from previously-hidden dark secrets,” said James Durie, head of scripted at Cineflix Rights. “What makes it special is how the story unfolds from a diverse, female perspective across three continents and three generations.”