Toronto’s Shaftesbury Films has snapped up the rights to the Giller Prize-winning Late Nights on Air, with plans to turn Elizabeth Hay’s acclaimed novel into a series.

The Ottawa author last month claimed the $40,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize over literary stars Michael Ondaatje and M.G. Vassanji for her book, which centers on a small 1970s radio station in the Canadian North, where a man falls in love with a voice on air. Late Nights is based on Hay’s own experiences working at CBC Radio in Yellowknife.

Shaftesbury chairman and co-CEO Christina Jennings says the company had its eyes on the book before it was shortlisted for the Giller.

‘About five weeks before it was announced, our VP of creative affairs [Julie Lacey] told me she’d scoured the big list of books and found this one. So I read it over about a week-and-a-half, and my first reaction was that these are extraordinary characters,’ Jennings recalls.

Shaftesbury is currently considering screenwriters.

With files from Suzan Ayscough