A red-letter day for all fans of Ken Follett: ZDF Enterprise subsidiary Network Movie will film the top-selling novels of the hit U.K. author. The Cologne production company has secured the rights to the novels of Ken Follett and will adapt them to the screen for ZDF with Munich's Constantin Film and ZDF Enterprises. The acquisition of international coproduction partners and the international sales of all rights to the programs will be handled by ZDF Enterprises.

About 90 million copies of Follett's books have been printed worldwide, and the books translated into more than 30 languages. Over 15 million copies of his books have been printed in Germany alone.

Dr. Alexander Coridass, CEO of ZDF Enterprises: "The acquisition of the rights to the novels gives us no less than two good reasons to rejoice: first, we are securing the production and marketing of an international top program for the ZDF group, and second, this is the first project between our subsidiary Network Movie and the Constantin Film subsidiary Constantin Television, an association that opens up promising perspectives."

This is the first time that a package of this size and importance was sold to a German production company by the US-american film rights agency CAA. Stefan Luebbe from the Luebbe group of publishers, which releases all German-speaking books of Ken Follett, and Marc Schneider from the agency RIGHTS acted as intermediaries.

Ken Follett: "I am extremely pleased to hear that this important deal was signed. I am convinced, that high-carat films will be developed from my novels."

The partners are planning to shoot the high-quality adaptations of Follett's largely historical novels as international coproductions in English and with stars known all over the world. The medium-term goal is to produce a collection of Ken Follett films as event programs for the global market. All rights will be available, even those going beyond the classical TV rights, such as DVD and video-on-demand.

The collection will begin with the filming of the international best-seller "A Dangerous Fortune," the sweeping saga of the rise and fall of an English banking family in the 19th century, and the current Follett hit "Whiteout," the suspenseful thriller about the theft of lethal viruses from a Scottish laboratory.

The Ken Follett collection will be produced by Network Movie and the Constantin Film subsidiary Constantin Television. Executive producers are Reinhold Elschot and Peter Nadermann for Network Movie, and Kerstin Schmidbauer and Robin von der Leyen for Constantin Television.