23/09/2021
KinoPoisk (Yandex-owned video streaming platform) and Banke, Goumen & Smirnova Literary Agency representing an internationally bestselling mystery detective author Mike Omer have made a deal. The streaming service has acquired the rights to adapt Omer`s popular mystery crime series about the criminal psychologist Zoe Bentley in all languages of the world and to subsequently distribute the TV series and/or films based on this trilogy.
Mike Omer is an author of thrillers, crime and fantasy novels. Mike Omer has got worldwide recognition for his detective trilogy about a criminal profiler named Zoe Bentley. The first book of the series, "A Killer's Mind", was released in 2018. It was translated into 17 languages and overtook J. K. Rowling’s, Stephen King's and James Patterson's novels in Amazon bestseller list. In 2019 the series was continued by the second book “In the Darkness”. “Thicker Than Blood”, the last book of the trilogy, was published in 2020. In 2020, the total sales of the trilogy in the United States amounted to about 1,000,000 copies (on all media). In Russia, Mike Omer's novels are also showing extraordinary popularity. In 2020, the total run of the first two novels of the Zoe Bentley series amounted to more than 300,000 individual printed copies. For comparison, the initial run of a new novel by Viktor Pelevin was 75,000 copies.
“I am extremely excited by the possibility of turning my book series into a TV show, together with Kinopoisk (Yandex), one of the major players on the Russian market. The international success of the Zoe Bentley series having such a wide geographical spread – from US to Western and Eastern Europe, and as far as to Vietnam – gave me an idea to turn to other parts of the world outside the US while looking for potential film partners. I’d like to think my writing combines European sensibility with American genre tradition – something that I expected would appeal to the audiences outside the US and that was confirmed by the success of my books in Russia. The fact that the Russian TV market has made a huge leap in the last couple of years, as well as the impressive pace of production process without compromising the quality were certainly decisive factors. At the time I’d come across the Netflix series To the Lake and Better than Us and was impressed by the quality of the shows, and their different angles on characters, conflict, and storytelling. So once Yandex got on board with their enthusiasm and clear intention to make it an outstanding TV show with international appeal, I was convinced beyond all doubt. I’m very proud to be part of this process and look forward to seeing the results.”
Mike Omer, author of Zoe Bentley’s trilogy
“The screen adaptation of Mike Omer’s books is a huge responsibility and great honor for us. KinoPoisk is going to work on a screen version of the world known bestseller for the first time. And it's quite important to find the story form of Omer’s novels, which can be understandable not only for Russian audiences but for foreign spectators as well. We have already started to work on the film’s script of the first book of the trilogy “A Killer’s mind” and have initiated negotiations with potential film directors of the project.”
Olga Filipuk, Yandex Media Services Content Director
_________________________
Michael Omer, known by pen names Mike Omer, Alex Rivers, was born in Jerusalem in a family of psychologists. He spent some time of his childhood in the United States. Before becoming a writer Omer was engaged in journalism and video game development. His debut fantasy novel was released in 1995. Michael Omer’s film rights is represented by the literary agency "Banke, Gumen and Smirnova", which also represents such famous authors as Alexey Salnikov (“Petrovs’ Flu”), Evgeny Vodolazkin (“Aviator”), Yana Wagner (“To the Lake”), Narine Abgaryan (“Manyunya”) and many others.
Zoe Bentley is the main character of Mike Omer's detective thrillers “A Killer's Mind”, “In the Darkness” and “Thicker Than Blood”. Zoe is a profiler and able to depict the most inventive criminal’s portrait tracking the sequence of actions. She was prompted to choose an extraordinary profession by a terrible event from her childhood, a close collision with a serial killer, whose identity she had managed to unravel before the police, despite her young age. In the novel "A Killer's Mind" Zoe Bentley, along with Agent Gray from the FBI, investigates a young women’s series of murders who were turned statues by the maniac, using embalming, so that they become almost indistinguishable from living people.
KinoPoisk is a Russian video streaming service owned by Yandex, which allows users to watch content on a subscription basis (through the Yandex Plus subscription) or purchase selected titles. The number of monthly viewing subscribers on the platform has already exceeded 4 million users.
