BETTING ON BOOKS
On a quest for the next hit, film executives are taking risks on developing unproven material,
Hollywood is knocking on debut writers’ doors as unmatched demand for content and a scarcity of proven ideas has savvy producers scouring the publishing landscape for the latest buzz story
On her 40th birthday, Gail Honeyman pledged to get serious about writing fiction. Even before the Scottish university administrator’s debut novel Eleanor Oli
phant Is Completely Fine was published last May, the reception was enthusiastic: she was flush with bids for film and television rights.
Honeyman, on the advice of her agency, turned almost all of them down. “We had to really hold our nerve that the right offer would come along,” says Emily Hayward-Whitlock, head of the Book to Film Literary and Development Department at the London, England-based talent agency The Artists Partnership Ltd. “And luckily, it did.”
The same week Honeyman’s debut novel was published, Deadline reported that the rights had been sold to Reese Witherspoon, who would produce and star in a film adaptation. It sounds like a Cinderella story for a debut novelist, but these days, more authors are bound for the ball than ever before as more producers take risks on developing unproven properties.
While this year’s Oscars nominated adaptations of critical faves such as André Aciman’s 2007 novel Call Me By Your Name and Hillary Jordan’s 2008 novel Mudbound (and Canadian writer Deborah Ellis’s 2000 book The Breadwinner in the Animated Feature category) alongside properties with built-in audiences such as Logan, based on Marvel’s Wolverine series, or Scott Neustadter’s The Disaster Artist, Oscar-calibre talent is increasingly drawn to material you’ve never heard of. Take Scarlett Johansson, who is attached to star in a film based on Christine Mangan’s debut novel Tangerine, publishing March 27, or Benedict Cumberbatch, who will play a history teacher who just happens to be immortal in Matt Haig’s How To Stop Time, which will be published in Canada on Feb. 6.
“To find something that has a big fan base that hasn’t been optioned already is increasingly difficult,” says Tecca Crosby, senior vice-president of Scripted Programming — Television at Toronto-based distributor Entertainment One. “There are producers all around the world with enormous resources and relationships that are pre-buying and pre-optioning material before it even becomes available to most of the rest of the world. It’s very hard to get out ahead.”
Hayward-Whitlock points to the influence of a new generation of entertainment platforms all searching for their signature series, the way Hulu became a must-subscribe service in the U.S. after the success of The Handmaid’s Tale. “There has been a massive increase in the appetite for books as source material for film and TV,” Hayward-Whitlock says. “I have definitely noticed the increase on the television side.”
FX announced earlier this month that 487 original scripted series aired in 2017, up from 455 in 2016, and more than double the 182 scripted series that aired in 2002. Last year, Netflix and FX Networks both retained full-time literary scouts to uncover the most promising source material to inspire their next 13 Reasons Why or American Crime Story. “If it sounds good for FX, I want to be one of the first people reading it,” says Megan Reid, who became the first director of literary scouting at FX Networks last June.
“Sometimes manuscripts are submitted to scouts at the same time that they’re submitted to editors. In some cases, I’ve given feedback on books before the agent has sent them out for consideration.”
Those interested in securing the buzziest projects have to act fast. Last May, Entertainment One bought the rights to Find You In The Dark, the debut novel from Canadian author Naben Ruthnum writing as Nathan Ripley, about a vigilante serial-killer investigator. That book won’t be published until March 6.
Crosby says her development senses were tingling before she even read the book. “Crime, whodunnits, why dunnits, these are key staples of the material that we’re looking for,” she says.
“It had a lot of the ear markings and then we read it and it had some really interesting, strong central characters. It just seemed to tick a lot of boxes for us.”
Entertainment One has found success distributing the dark detective saga Cardinal, based on Giles Blunt’s John Cardinal mysteries, currently in its second season on CTV. The company is doubling down on crime adaptations with Caught, based on Lisa Moore’s Giller-nominated novel and starring Allan Hawco, airing on CBC next month, and Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects starring Amy Adams airing on HBO this summer.
The increased competition has empowered publishers to be choosy. “So much of what agents consider is not just the deal you are being offered but the plan the producer has to get it made,” says Samantha Haywood, president of the Transatlantic Agency, who represents Ripley. “Who they will attach to it, whether that’s a show runner, major screenwriter or director or actors.”
Take Zoe Whittall’s Giller-finalist The Best Kind of People: Transatlantic turned down several offers for the rights before Sarah Polley pitched it as a feature she would write and direct.
Whether these projects actually get made is another question. A film adaptation of last year’s YA blockbuster, Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give, starring rising star Amandla Stenberg, was announced before the novel’s publication. However, Thomas’s agent, Brooks Sherman, perceived that production didn’t get rolling on the film until the novel became a proven blockbuster.
As for that Eleanor Oliphant movie? Though the novel was a Sunday Times bestseller in the U.K., the film has been listed as “In Development” on IMDB since June. That’s hardly unusual in the world of literary adaptations where a mad battle to secure rights is often followed by years of silence.
Such is the elusive nature of buzz: sometimes it’s less of a Cinderella story than it is The Emperor’s New Clothes, with everyone pooling their belief into something unseen. “Once something gains momentum there is all sorts of whispering that goes on, with people talking about, ‘It’s going to be absolutely huge!’ within the publishing company,” says Hayward-Whitlock.
“That excitement continues to build and everyone puts their energy behind it to help it get to the point where there is a film deal. But” — she says with a laugh — “nobody really knows.”