New Regency has acquired the film and television rights to Sorrow and Bliss – New Zealand author Meg Mason’s most recent novel.
Sorrow and Bliss was published in Australia and New Zealand in September 2020 and was recently longlisted for the JANN MEDLICOTT ACORN PRIZE FOR FICTION in the annual New Zealand Book Awards. Later this year it will also be published across 21 countries and 16 translation territories.
It’s the story of a woman trying to make sense of the mental illness that’s plagued her for decades. The emotions and events of the book are often compared to those of bestseller Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (find this and 10 more books about people with mental health disorders on our website).
‘How can something so hilarious move the reader to tears? How can such a sad story make one laugh so much? Meg Mason pulls off this brilliant feat in Sorrow and Bliss. Everyone who has read this at HarperCollins has fallen in love with Meg Mason’s fierce, tricky, funny heroine, and we are all deeply proud to be publishing this amazing novel.’
Jonathan Burnham, President and Publisher, Harper Division, HarperCollins US
Meg Mason began her career at The Financial Times and The Times of London. Her works have appeared in The Sunday Times, The New Yorker, GQ, Vogue, ELLE and marie claire.
In 2012 she switched to fiction and published her first book Say It Again in a Nice Voice – a memoir of early motherhood. The novel You Be Mother followed in 2017. Sorrow and Bliss is her third novel.
New Regency is behind over 140 films and more than 50 television series, including Academy Award®-winner The Revenant (2016), Academy Award®-winning 12 Years A Slave (2014) and Birdman (2015), as well as the 2018 box office hit Bohemian Rhapsody. Their upcoming premiers include Adrian Lyne’s Deep Water, starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas; Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, starring Richard E. Grant, Sharon Horgan and Sarah Lancashire; an untitled original film from David O. Russell starring Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Robert De Niro, Mike Myers and Chris Rock; Robert Eggers’ The Northman, starring Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman and Willem Dafoe.