Shaftesbury Develops Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures into TV Series

Press Release, Shaftesbury Films
November 13, 2006

S haftesbury Films has acquired the rights to the book Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, which will be developed into a TV series.

The drama series, based on a book written by Vincent Lam, a Toronto-based emergency-room physician, is being developed for The Movie Network in Canada.

“I’m thrilled to see that my book has started to take on a life of its own,” said Lam. The collection of short stories connects the lives of a group of young doctors as they move through medical school into the real world of emergency medicine.

“We’re always looking for fresh new characters on which to base a television series,” says Christina Jennings the chairman of Shaftesbury Films. “We believe we have found this in Vincent Lam's book which provides us with a fresh take on the medical profession. His characters of Fitzgerald and Chen are riveting. We are delighted to be adapting his book, which deservedly won The Giller Prize, and thrilled that The Movie Network embraced the project and is working with us to develop the book into a dramatic series.”

“E.R. is a medical drama for conventional television; Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures is a medical drama for pay television,” says Michelle Marion, the director of Canadian independent production at The Movie Network. “The Movie Network is the perfect home for a series based on Dr. Lam's book—you think you are in for a journey through the expected world of what you know about doctors and medicine and instead you are treated to an unexpected, almost metaphoric journey of doctors dealing with powerful internal conflict and beautiful human frailty in ways that catch the reader off-guard. We are thrilled to be working with the talented team at Shaftesbury—with whom we do the highly successful original series ReGenesis.”

© Shaftesbury Films 2006

Read Vincent's statement regarding the adaptation