The Collingwood Film Company has optioned the film and TV rights to Douglas Hunter’s 2007 book God’s Mercies: Rivalry, Betrayal and the Dream of Discovery, a finalist for both the Governor General’s Literary Award (Non-Fiction) and the Writers Trust Non-Fiction Prize.

The book will be adapted for the screen by Jesse Thomas Cook (pictured, left) and produced by Cook and Liv Collins (pictured, right) of Collingwood Film Company. Cook’s latest features, Cult Hero and The Hyperborean, combined for 7 CSA nominations.

The story revolves around the mutiny aboard Henry Hudson’s Discovery in James Bay, and the subsequent quest by Samuel de Champlain to travel up the Ottawa River to collect a captive English boy from the Anishinaabe people. A boy rumored to be Hudson’s son.

The deal was arranged by literary agent Michael Levine at Westwood Creative Artists on behalf of Hilary McMahon, and by Martyn Krys of FilmLegals Entertainment on behalf of Jesse Thomas Cook.