Chartoff Productions and Ravinett Productions announced today that they have entered into an agreement with author Guy Gavriel Kay to have him adapt his bestselling novel, The Last Light of the Sun for the screen. Kay will serve as a producer and as screenwriter on the project, which will be overseen by Chartoff and Ravinett.
Chartoff Productions president Robert Chartoff is perhaps best known for co-producing Rocky (which won a Best Picture Academy Award in 1976), The Right Stuff, and Raging Bull. Ravinett is currently engaged with Chartoff in developing Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, for Warner Brothers, to be directed by Wolfgang Peterson.
The Last Light of the Sun, Kay’s most recent novel, marks the second of his works to be developed for film. His book, The Lions of Al-Rassan, is currently in development at Warners with Edward Zwick set to direct the film.
The Last Light of the Sun is an epic historical fantasy drawing upon the legends and sagas of the Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, and Celts of a thousand years ago. It tells the story of a raid gone violently wrong – and the consequences of that, interweaving men and women of three cultures in a compelling page-turner. It continues Kay’s daring use of the fantastic as a way of exploring history, on a level that has caused the Washington Post to declare him, in a review of The Last Light of the Sun, ‘the reigning master of the form.’
Ted Ravinett says, “Guy Kay’s writing is unique. The Last Light of the Sun captured us on so many levels for making a feature film. It offers passion, intense action, deep humanity and great sacrifice, and it uses fantasy in a brilliant way to evoke the world of the Scandinavian Sagas. Guy Kay is one of the best storytellers writing today.”
Kay comments, “It gives me pleasure – and reassurance – to be associated in this project with someone of the stature and experience of Bob Chartoff, and Ted Ravinett’s acute reading of my novel tells me he ‘gets’ what I’m trying to do – and how The Last Light of the Sun can work as a film.” Kay was represented in the deal by Jerry Kalajian of IPG in Los Angeles and Linda McKnight of Westwood Creative Artists in Toronto.
Kay is the author of nine previous novels. His tenth, Ysabel, will be published early in 2007 by NAL/Roc in the United States, Viking in Canada, and Simon & Schuster in the United Kingdom. His fiction has been on bestseller lists worldwide, and is translated into more than twenty languages. Kay’s literary career began when he was retained by the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien to assist in the editorial construction of Tolkien’s posthumously published, The Silmarillion.
GGK’s note