EXCLUSIVE: CAA has signed Luke Davies, the decorated Australian screenwriter, novelist and poet best known for his work on the 2016 Dev Patel drama, Lion.
Marking the feature directorial debut of Garth Davis, who’s currently back in theaters with the Amazon sci-fi thriller Foe, Lion is based on the true story of Saroo Brierley (Patel), who, against incredible odds, sought to reunite with his lost family after being separated from them by thousands of miles, over a period of 25 years. Davies won a BAFTA and was nominated for an Academy Award for his adaptation of Brierley’s 2013 book, A Long Way Home. Nicole Kidman also starred in the pic, which launched out of the Toronto Film Festival and went on to claim a total of six Oscar noms, including Best Picture, also grossing an impressive $140M+ worldwide.
Davies is also known for teaming with filmmaker Paul Greengrass to script his adaptation of Paulette Jiles’ novel News of the World, a Western released by Universal that also nabbed several Oscar nominations. He personally secured both Writers Guild and Critics’ Choice Award nominations for the film, which follows Captain Kidd (Tom Hanks), a veteran of the Civil War who travels the country delivering the day’s news to isolated communities. Kidd’s journey takes an unexpected turn when he encounters Johanna (Helena Zengel), a girl kidnapped years ago by the Kiowa, who he decides to get back to her family, regardless of the perils involved.
Additionally, Davies teamed with filmmaker Felix van Groeningen on the script for Beautiful Boy, the addiction drama produced for Amazon by Plan B, which marked Van Groeningen’s English-language feature debut. The gut-wrenching father-son film, starring Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carell, adapted a pair of memoirs by David Sheff and his son Nic, who grew up addicted to meth.
In television, Davies developed and co-wrote the Hulu limited series Catch-22, directed and exec produced by George Clooney, a dark satire based on the classic novel by Joseph Heller.
The Australian creative continues to be represented by Eva Lontscharitsch at EML Entertainment and Erik Hyman at Paul Hastings.