Avatar Adapts Vallés' 'Hunting the Executioner' as TV Series — SkimNews
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- Avatar Entertainment acquired rights to Spanish journalist Vicente Vallés' novel "Hunting the Executioner" (La Caza del Ejecutor) to adapt into an eight-part TV series, with founder Larry Robinson executive producing and no streamer or network yet attached.
- Screenwriters Borja Moreno and Pablo Riquelme Cuartero are set to adapt the book; the London- and L.A.-based Avatar is both producing and financing the project.
- The novel follows a CIA agent and a Spanish secret agent traveling the world to identify and neutralize a mysterious assassin targeting western spies.
- Vallés is a veteran newscaster who anchors the evening news on Spanish broadcaster Antena 3; "Hunting the Executioner" is his second novel, published by Editorial Espasa (Grupo Planeta).
- Moreno and Cuartero had previously been hired by Universal Television to adapt Vallés' first novel "Operation Kazan" — a Russian-backed U.S. presidential candidate thriller that was ultimately put into turnaround, making this their second attempt at adapting his work.
- The Vallés deal is part of a broader Avatar acquisition push that also secured rights to Katy Hogan's "Out of the Darkness," Robert Enright's Sam Pope action series, and Mary Dearborn's Ernest Hemingway biography.
- Robinson announced the project at MIPCOM in Cannes, calling it "a super premium action thriller series that could air around the world."
Why it matters: Avatar Entertainment is signaling an aggressive slate-building push, snapping up four separate adaptation rights in one stretch — and the Vallés project carries a built-in second-act story: the screenwriters reuniting with an author after their first attempt at adapting his debut novel collapsed at Universal Television, giving them a do-over on a premise that has already passed through one major studio.
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