The Petroleum Papers
New Pictures - an All3Media Company- has secured the rights to Geoff Dembicki’s The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change, published by Greystone Books. David MacPherson ("The Rig") will adapt the book as a multi-episode drama for the screen, with Imogen O’Sullivan executive producing.
The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change was a Washington Post and Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the prestigious Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust Prize for Nonfiction. The book draws on hundreds of confidential oil industry documents spanning decades, revealing how the fossil fuel industry joined forces with right-wing politicians to halt progress on preventing the climate crisis. Climate Spring are acting as climate consultants to New Pictures on the adaptation, with All3Media International advising as international distribution partner.
Investigative journalist Geoff Dembicki tells the story of how American oil companies ignored warnings about climate devastation as early as 1959. Instead of alerting the world to act on an impending global disaster, the companies created advertising campaigns arguing that climate change wasn’t real and that alternatives to oil would be an economic disaster. They then built a global right-wing echo chamber to amplify their message, and ultimately helped turn Donald Trump into the defining politician of our era.
The book also tells the high-stakes stories of people fighting back: the lawyer who brought Big Tobacco to its knees and turned his attention to Big Oil, a young Filipino activist who saw her family drown in a climate disaster, and a former engineer at one of the biggest oil companies who was pushed out for asking too many hard questions.
Willow Grylls, Co-Founder and CEO of New Pictures, and Imogen O’Sullivan, Executive Producer, praised the book: “‘The Petroleum Papers’ will build on Geoff Dembicki’s powerful investigative journalism to create a multi-stranded drama that lays bare the decades-long conspiracy to block meaningful action on climate change in the pursuit of profit. Our series will tell this compelling story through the characters involved: from the oil executives and lobbyists covering up the evidence, to the whistleblowers who stuck their necks out to expose their masters, and the campaigners and communities most imperiled by climate change who took on the corporate monoliths and their allies. As Donald Trump is elected to his second term promising to ‘drill, baby drill,’ this series couldn’t be more important, or more timely." stated.
Meanwhile, Geoff Dembicki, Global Managing Editor of the climate media outlet DeSmog, focuses on climate change as an issue: “The story of how oil companies worked behind the scenes for decades to deny their role in climate change isn’t just one of the most enraging corporate cover-ups in modern history; it’s also a fascinating human saga of greed, denial, and the power of truth-telling. I couldn’t be more thrilled that New Pictures is bringing it to the screen," highlighted.