The Wrong People, a 1967 novel by Robin Maugham once optioned by actor Sal Mineo, is being adapted for a feature film.
Deadline reports: “Arthouse outfit Peccadillo Pictures, the UK’s foremost distributor of LGBT movies, is teaming up on the project with veteran UK screenwriter David McGillivray (Schizo), who has adapted the novel and will make his directorial debut.”
The novel’s synopsis, via Valancourt Books: “Set against the seedy backdrop of 1960s Tangier, The Wrong People (1967) is the story of Arnold Turner, a repressed English schoolmaster on holiday in Morocco, where he meets Ewing Baird, a wealthy American expat with a dark secret. Ewing lavishly entertains him and even provides him with a young lover, but as Arnold becomes more and more involved with Ewing he realizes only too late that he has been lured into a dangerous trap – and his only chance of escape is by helping Ewing to carry out a sinister plan. Drawing in part on the author’s real-life efforts to expose the African sex trafficking trade, Robin Maugham’s first explicitly gay-themed novel was both a critical and a commercial success, being reprinted several times – including in the important Gay Modern Classics series – and was optioned for a film version by Sal Mineo (Rebel Without a Cause).”
