The film rights to a book about the life and suicide of Ian Curtis, the singer/songwriter who fronted theManchester pop group Joy Division, has been snapped up the same New York productioncompany that made Michael Almereyda's Hamlet and Jonathan Nossiter's Sundance-winning debut Sunday

Andrew Fierberg and Amy Hobbyof Double A Films said that they bought the rights to Touching From A Distance, which was published in the UK by Faber and Faber. Written by his widow Deborah Curtis, the biography follows Curtis' extraordinary life from his early teenage years to his death on the eve of the group's first American tour. The screenplay, titled Transmission, is being written by writer/director Michael Stock.

Double A Films and actor/director John Martin (recently seen in Henry Bean's Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winner The Believer) have also acquired the rights to Jim Knipfel's darkly funny memoir Quitting the Nairobi Trio, an account of hissix-month incarceration in a Minneapolis psychiatric ward.

Founded in 1995, Double A iscurrently involved in pre-production on Steven Shainberg's Secretary, which is to star James Spader, Maggie Gyllenhaal,Jeremy Davies, and Lesley Ann Warren.

Fierberg and Hobby are also co-producers, with producers Beni Tadd Atoori and Gina Resnick, of Jill Sprecher's Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, currently in post-production and starring Matthew McConaughey, John Turturro, Alan Arkin and Amy Irving. The film is executive produced by Michael Stipe and Sandy Sternof Single Cell Pictures.

Topics