EXCLUSIVE: A24 UK looks to have emerged victorious among more than a dozen suitors to option rights to Nick Brucker’s upcoming novel White Smoke, with plans to adapt it into a TV series. A24 will produce alongside Oscar nominee Benedict Cumberbatch and his SunnyMarch production company. Cumberbatch is also attached to star.
White Smoke, a heist novel to be published in 2027, is set among a group of duplicitous con men and thieves determined to steal the Vatican’s most remarkable treasures during a papal conclave.
Sources say that even though the book won’t hit shelves till next year, the town was buzzing for the property, with various suitors chasing for both film and TV. Since the book is the first in a series, the sellers felt the TV route made more sense, and A24 and SunnyMarch’s offer was just too good to pass up.
Nick Brucker is the pseudonym of speculative fiction writer Nicholas Binge, whose latest novel Dissolution was hailed as one of the best books of 2025 by the New York Times; it is being adapted at Sony Pictures with Eric Heisserer penning the screenplay and Chronology and Temple Hill co-producing. The White Smoke book has sold in 23 international territories to date.
For Cumberbatch, this marks his return to TV following his turn in the Netflix limited series Eric, which bowed last spring. SunnyMarch also co-produced the Emmy-nominated and BAFTA-winning 2018 limited series Patrick Melrose, starring Cumberbatch, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Hugo Weaving; and an adaptation of Ian McEwan’s Child In Time for BBC One.
On the film side, recent productions have included Mahalia Belo’s debut feature The End We Start From starring Jodie Comer, Katherine Waterston, Mark Strong and Joel Fry; the Golden Globe-winning Kevin Macdonald film The Mauritanian starring Jodie Foster, Tahar Rahim, Cumberbatch and Shailene Woodley; Will Sharpe’s period piece The Electrical Life of Louis Wain starring Cumberbatch, Claire Foy, Toby Jones and Andrea Riseborough; and The Courier, a Cold War espionage drama directed by Dominic Cooke starring Cumberbatch, Rachel Brosnahan, Merab Ninidze and Jessie Buckley.
UTA negotiated the White Smoke deal on behalf of Binge and the filmmakers. Cumberbatch is represented by UTA, Conway van Gelder Grant, and Sloane Offer Weber Dern. Binge is represented by UTA and Alexander Cochran at Greyhound Literary.