Flying Scoop Options 'Evil on the Roof of the World' Film Rights

Flying Scoop, the award-winning production company known for creating compelling content for networks like National Geographic, Discovery, and Fox Nation, has secured the film rights to William Elliott Hazelgrove's powerful narrative nonfiction book "Evil on the Roof of the World: A Cycling Trip That Ended in Terror." The book, published by Bloomsbury on November 13, 2025, tells the heartbreaking true story of Lauren Geoghegan and Jay Austin, two young American idealists who abandoned their stable Washington, D.C. careers to embark on a global cycling adventure, only to meet a tragic end in the remote Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan in July 2018. The couple, along with two fellow cyclists, were brutally murdered by five ISIS terrorists on what's often called "the Roof of the World," cutting short their inspiring journey documented through their Simply Cycling travel blog and social media posts.

Mark Finkelpearl, Partner and Executive Producer at Flying Scoop, describes the story as "heartbreaking, courageous, and deeply cinematic," emphasizing that the company feels honored to bring Lauren and Jay's journey and legacy to the screen. Hazelgrove masterfully reconstructs their story through extensive research including interviews with friends and family, global media coverage, and the couple's own writings, creating a profound exploration of idealism, risk, love, and violence that reviewers have compared to Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild." Nathaniel Starck, Executive Producer and Director at Flying Scoop, adds that their goal is to adapt the book with integrity, showing both the beauty of the couple's journey and the tragedy of their loss, emphasizing that this is more than just a true crime story but rather a testament to two people who believed in connection and risk.

Flying Scoop, which brands itself as "Content Engineers™" specializing in bold, story-driven content that explores the "hidden edges of society," brings significant experience to this project, having produced hundreds of hours of television and recent streaming successes like "The Real Hatfields and McCoys Forever Feuding." William Elliott Hazelgrove, the National Bestselling author of ten novels and twelve nonfiction titles whose work has received numerous accolades and previous film options, has created what Finkelpearl calls "a meditation on youthful dreaming, unflinching hope, and what happens when that hope collides with the darkest corners of reality." More information about the author can be found at www.williamhazelgrove.com, where readers can explore his extensive literary portfolio and learn more about the creative mind behind this moving narrative.