Miriam Battye established her professional reputation writing for the small screen, but is now broadening her scope with two projects that will take her career to new places.

One is a film adaptation of Rose Tremain’s short story Extra Geography, a tale of two schoolgirls who make a pact to fall in love with their geography teacher. The other will see Battye — “it’s just pronounced Batty… I don’t know where the ‘e’ comes from” — make her directing debut with an adaptation of her 2023 play Strategic Love Play, with BBC Film.

“A friend sent me the story a few years ago and I couldn’t believe how much it felt like I was reading my own life,” she says of Extra Geography. “I am so excited by the team that’s coming together to do it.” Brock Media and Film4 co-produce with One Day’s Molly Manners on board to direct. Strategic Love Play, which just ended a restaging at London’s Soho Theatre, “is about two people on a first date and it is very much one scene. But I think I know how to transfer that intensity, while making it more of a cinematic experience.”

For television, her action-packed resumé includes a stint in the Succession writing room for the HBO drama’s fourth and final season. “It was such an amazing mental gymnastics challenge every day, keeping up with that group and the demands of the show,” she says of an experience that saw her heartbeat elevate by 20 beats a minute, according to her Fitbit. “I was so excited about that job, and I think my Fitbit was illuminating just how much it meant to me.”

Having also worked on Prime Video’s Dead Ringers, Mary & George for Sky Studios, and the upcoming second season of Netflix’s Beef, Battye has been inside enough writers’ rooms by now to know the ropes. So much so that the next step will be to become a showrunner, on an adaptation of an as-yet-unpublished novel for A24.

“It’s a sci-fi love story, but sci-fi in a way you’ve never seen before,” says the Manchester native of a series that already has “a big Holly­wood director” attached. “I never thought I would do something in that genre, but it’s incredibly grounded and characterful and the most entertaining read.”

Contact: Alex Rusher, Independent Talent

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