British Columbia-based prodcos Sea to Sky Entertainment and Grinding Halt Films have optioned the rights to Ojibway author Richard Wagamese’s novel Ragged Company.

Cree filmmaker Jules Koostachin and screenwriter and novelist Dennis Foon are attached to adapt the novel into a feature film, with the script currently in active development. Grinding Halt Films’ Stephen Campanelli will direct the feature, which is expected to go into production in 2023.

Sea to Sky Entertainment founding president Shauna Hardy is executive producer on the film, alongside Campanelli and Koostachin. Foon is associate producer.

The deal was brokered between Westwood Creative Artists, Sisto Law and CFA Law.

Foon previously adapted Wagamese’s bestselling novel Indian Horse into a feature, which was also directed by Campanelli. Indian Horse earned more than US$2 million at the box office when it was released in 2018.

Ragged Company follows four people who are homeless and seek refuge in a movie theatre during a severe Arctic front and find their lives turned upside down after a lucky break.

The novel was published by the New York-headquartered publishing company Doubleday. Wagamese, a journalist from the Wabaseemoong Independent Nations in Northwestern Ontario, has also written novels such as Keeper’n Me and Medicine Walk.

The creative team met through the Whistler Film Festival (WFF), Hardy told a crowd at a WFF event for Sea to Sky Entertainment on Thursday (Dec. 1).

Hardy, founder of WFF and who served as its executive director for 20 years, met Campanelli at the 2021 festival while he attended with his feature, Drinkwater. Koostachin was a participant in the 2019 Screenwriters Lab for her feature Broken Angel (MaaShwaKan MaNiTo), which had its Western Canadian premiere at WFF on Thursday (Dec. 1), while Foon worked as a mentor to Koostachin in the WFF Screenwriters Lab on Broken Angel, which is in this year’s WFF lineup.

“This is really a full-circle moment for me,” said Hardy.

Campanelli said he was the one who brought the book to Hardy’s attention at WFF. “She literally dragged me out of this nice warm restaurant all the way through Whistler, all the way to the book store to buy a copy of the book; dragged me back to the restaurant and said ‘I’m going to read the book this weekend,’ and she did and says, ‘I’m in,'” he said with a laugh.

The team hopes to complete the film by the end of next year, added Campanelli.

With files from Victoria Ahearn

Image courtesy of Sea to Sky Entertainment and Grinding Halt Films. L-R: Dennis Foon, Jules Arita Koostachin, Shauna Hardy, and Stephen Campanelli.