Rights ownership company New Franchise Media has Richard Regen working on a second draft of the action franchise feature A Matter of Honour.

New Franchise president and CEO Jeffrey Steiner told Playback that Frank Marshall, who guided the Bourne Identity franchise, made changes to the first draft by Regen.

The property is one of the thriller novels by best-selling British writer Jeffrey Archer that Toronto-based New Franchise Media holds the worldwide film, TV and digital rights to.

Once Regen’s script for A Matter of Honour is completed by January, it will be considered by DreamWorks, which has a first look deal with The Kennedy/Marshall Company.

Steiner is also looking for show-runners for two TV projects in development that are based on Archer literary properties.

The first is a TV adaptation of The Prodigal Daughter, the 1982 Archer novel about Florentyna Kane, the daughter of Abel Rosnovski of Archer’s Kane and Abel, his biggest-selling novel ever, released in 1979.

The other Archer property being developed as an on-going TV series is False Impression.

The crime-caper was originally developed as a movie.

Steiner, a former head of TEDCO in Toronto before turning film and TV producer, said a TV series will allow longer story-telling and deeper development of characters.

New Franchise is looking for experienced showrunners from the U.S., Canada or the U.K., ones that have been writing executive producers on earlier TV series.

As a measure of the caliber of showrunners sought for both projects is Patrick Harbinson, the British screenwriter chosen to adapt a separate Archer novel, The Eleventh Commandment, for producing partner Gale Anne Hurd (The Walking Dead), Universal Cable Productions and NBC, the U.S. broadcaster.

“We’re looking for a writer that has an intelligent and commercial take on Jeffrey’s material,” Steiner said.

The TV series will be destined for the world market, so the showrunners will need to have experience dealing with U.S. networks.

Steiner said the TV series can either be six-point Canadian series that are simulcast with an American network.

Or they can be structured as Canadian-U.K. co-productions, with an American TV sale in the mix.

Either way, a host of Canadian TV scribes will be employed as the showrunners bring The Prodigal Daughter and False Impression to the small screen, Steiner predicted.