Calgary Studio Takes Hudson's Bay Book Toward a TV Drama
Calgary-based Titan1Studios has won the screen rights to a Canadian history book and is developing it into a historical drama. The company announced the project on 3 November 2026, as Deadline reported.
The book is The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire by Stephen R. Bown, published in 2020. It won the 2021 National Business Book Award and the J.W. Dafoe Book Prize. Titan1Studios holds exclusive media and adaptation rights, meaning it is the only company allowed to turn the book into film or television for now.
The series is called House of Hudson. It is in development, which means the script and creative plans are still being built and no broadcast date has been set. It is set in the 1820s and follows the struggle between the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company. That fight ended in a forced merger of the two fur-trading firms, which were the rival powers of the time.
The drama also follows the rise of Sir George Simpson, the Hudson's Bay Company governor known as "The Little Emperor." The studio is describing the show as "The Crown meets Peaky Blinders," a pitch that compares it to two British period dramas, one about the royal family and one about a 1920s gangland family.
Rathan Moorthy, the chief executive and executive producer of Titan1Studios, and Wes Ambrecht, the company's vice president of content, are leading the project together. The studio is now searching for a showrunner. That is the lead writer who guides a series from script to screen day to day.
Rights talks were handled by Jake Babad and Caroline Vassallo at Westwood Creative Art, the representatives who negotiated the deal for the book's rights.
For anyone who has read Bown's book, the appeal of a drama is easy to see. The story is about money, power and a country still taking shape, the kind of material that can fill a writers' room for many months. For now, though, the work is at the start: finding the person who will run the show and deciding where it will be made and shown.
