Barometer Rising

Treatment Deck
Request The Script

Status: Packaging
English
105 Pages

Co-Production Countries:
UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Benelaux, Scandinavia

Based On The Novel By
Hugh Maclennan

Writer
Tom Edgerton

Genre
Epic Romance, Disaster, Historical

Comparables
Atonement, English Patient, Titanic, Maudie, A Night To Remember, Doctor Zhivago

After Neil Macrae returns home from war, he must clear his name to regain his family and freedoms. But when a catastrophic explosion kills his corroborating witness, life takes on a new meaning and purpose.

In the Nova Scotian winter of 1917, unlikely shipwright Penelope Wain is convinced that her childhood sweetheart Neil Macrae is dead. Killed in action while serving in Flanders, he was under the command of her conniving, controlling father Colonel Geoffrey Wain. 

That he purportedly died in disgrace, subject to a court martial for refusing an order he disputed, does not alter Penelope’s love for him; instead driving a wedge between father and daughter. Unbeknownst to them both, Neil is alive and has secretly returned to Halifax under an assumed identity to clear his name. 

He seeks out an old comrade, Alec Mackenzie, whose testimony would prove his innocence and implicate Col. Wain in a conspiracy against him. But before Neil is able to secure Alec’s account, a catastrophic collision of two ships reshapes the city and its inhabitants forever

Author
Hugh Maclennan

Born in March 1907, Hugh MacLennan , CC, CQ, FRSL, FRSCL, was a Canadian novelist and essayist whose books offer an incisive social and psychological critique of Canadian life.

A Rhodes scholar at Oxford, MacLennan received a Ph.D. from Princeton and taught Latin and history at Lower Canada College, Montreal. He was professor of English at McGill University.

His first novel was Barometer Rising (1941); notable later works include The Precipice (1948), The Watch That Ends the Night (1959), and Two Solitudes (1945) that was adapted into an award winning film in 1967. He died in November 1990.

IP Information

  • Published in 1941
  • Never out of print, translated in 30+ languages
  • 700,000+ Copies Sold
  • Previously optioned by Warner Bros with Donald Sutherland attached.

Further Reading