Top Kindle Novel First and Only Optioned by Scottish Co. for feature film and crowd funding

Option agreement signed for top selling Kindle thriller to Edinburgh based film company, Encaptivate, in what will be the highest amount ever sourced through crowd funding in the history of Scottish film.

Today at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Encaptivate Ltd, a fledgling Scottish film production company, announced its first option film agreement with Peter Flannery, for his best selling Kindle novel First and Only.

First and Only is a self-published thriller which has had over 60,000 downloads. The book has had huge critical success with its readers, with 500 reviews from the UK and US Amazon websites. 90% of the reviews have been 4 or 5 stars, with the majority of them being 5 stars.

Maverick producer and director of television, commercials and brand films, Magnus Wake, has setup Encaptivate to make films using techniques and online tools that are just emerging. Wake believes that there is all kinds of potential in the digital age.

“These days you need to be looking in all kinds of ways to finance and distribute your film. Of course there’s always a place for the established methods, but there are lots of new opportunities out there such as crowd funding”.

Encaptivate and Wake will be launching their own crowd funding campaign later in the year, looking to raise over $500,000; more than has ever before been attempted in the UK.

Wake is keen to demonstrate how exciting crowd funding can be. “We’re looking to create something truly ground breaking. We’re not just asking for a donation; we want to give back rewards that people will love. We’ve got one amazing reward which will bring our backers completely into the film making process. People will hopefully not only want to back this film but will really enjoy doing it”.

Even the genesis for the project was very digital, as Wake explains: “I read the book on my Kindle, found it so gripping that I immediately tweeted Peter the author and jokingly asked whether anyone had the film rights. A year or so on my wife picked up the Kindle and told me about a great book that would be a brilliant film. I knew exactly which one she was talking about. So I tweeted Peter again and now we’re in pre-production. It’s an amazing tale that deserves to be on screen and I'm looking forward to the buzz of the public creating something which will be a bit of a revolution in film production.”

More information about the film can be found online or via Twitter @firstonlymovie