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Foreign.
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This episode of the Town is presented to you by AMC Networks. Billy Magnuson and Zach Galifianakis star in the new series the Audacity on AMC and AMC. Plus Influence Rises. People unravel and CEO meltdowns are business as usual among Silicon Valley elite. Executive produced by Jonathan Glatzer, a writer, producer of Succession and Better Call Saul, The Audacity premieres April 12th only on AMC and AMC. It is Wednesday, April 1st. What do four of the big movies of the year so far at the box office have in common? There's Project Hail Mary, Wuthering Heights, reminders of him, the housemaid. All four are high profile book adaptations continuing the long tradition of books to screen, going all the way back to the first Hollywood blockbusters like Casablanca 100 years ago. These days every movie producer is on the hunt for material that feels theatrical. And if it's not a sequel or toy brand or pre branded character, popular books are still the next best thing. Arguably more important than ever as we seem to be coming out of an era where superheroes were the big IP draw, though those stories, remember, were also comic books. Now with the rise of female focused authors like Colleen Hoover and Frieda McFadden, big audience aggregators like Book Talk and the various celebrity book clubs. Craig's a big fan of the Reese books. The pre branding of that built in book audience can more reliably lead to a built in audience for an original movie. That's giving more power to the book rights holders according to the reps I've talked to. So it's time we did a check in on that market. What genres and authors are hot right now? Maybe who's fallen out of favor and some of the prices that authors can get to option their work. I've got Jason Richmond on the show today. He's an agent at uta, the big talent agency and we going to talk about it all today. It's the book to screen pipeline and the hot Properties for movie and TV adaptations from the Ringer and Puck. I'm Matt Bellany and this is the Town. All right. We are here with Jason Richmond who is a partner and co head of the media rights group at uta. Thank you for joining us.
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B
Thanks so much for having me, man.
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C
Okay. I wanted to do this episode because obviously we've seen with Project Hail Mary and Housemaid and a bunch of other recent hits. This is not a new phenomenon. We've, you know, books have been ripe for adaptation since literally the beginning of the movie business. But I do feel like books are kind of having a moment right now. And it's because this notion of what is theatrical and what can get an audience into a theater is changing. And if you don't have the pre branded ip, you're looking at books and you've been doing this for a while. Describe the market for adaptations right now.
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B
Yeah, I have. Well, and thanks again for having me. You know, literary adaptations are hot. They're white hot right now.
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C
But how is it different from this the past 20, 30 years? Because books have always been hot and book adaptations have always made good movies. I just think that because everyone's looking for safety yet quasi originality, it's lending self to books being the kind of default. If you can find a hot book or. We'll get to this in a moment. If you can get in early on something that becomes a hot book, then you have a leg up not only in getting something made, but it's finding an audience.
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B
Well, you know, someone has already anointed it, a book has been published. So there, there is an innate, a foundation, a readership there. But it's interesting, Matt, you know, when I started at UTA many moons ago, you know, our department was called the book department. You know, we weren't in publishing at all whatsoever. And so, but that term has evolved into media rights to I think really, really speak to the growth and you know what, what constitutes media rights these days? It's books, it's short stories, it's podcasts, it's life story rights. It's, you know, optioning, you know, a TikTok story down the line. A really, really exciting time to be in our business.
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C
Okay, so walk me through the process here. You are representing a rights holder. What could, what is the going rate right now for a decent author to get an option from a producer?
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B
Matt, you, you know, we're not, we're not going to talk numbers here.
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C
Of course we are. You don't have to give me names. You know, you don't have to give
- [05:02]
B
me names, but we're aggressive agents and advocates for our clients.
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C
I know, but, like, obviously, Andy Weir had a huge hit with the Martians, so his next book is going to be a big commodity. Yeah, but authors that maybe are not that. What is the market? Like, what genres are hot right now? Yeah.
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B
You know, so. So memoirs, I think it's. We're gonna have a year of the memoir. So, you know, I represent a woman named Bell Burden who had a memoir called Strangers that was published in early January. The history, in terms of how she came to me, I read a Modern love column that she had written in summer of 2023. New York Times for the New York Times. And it was, you know, it was evocative and moved me, and I needed to meet this woman. She secretly made a book deal and spent the last few years writing that memoir. I got the opportunity to read it last. Last fall, and it just. I inhaled it. It was so damn good. And. And I, you know, had the opportunity to meet with her, signed her, and, you know, it was a little bit of kismet in terms of the reaction, but we kind of knew it. You know, we have to have so much conviction as we're reading things so. So early, before they become a number one New York Times bestseller and have created a stir in the marketplace.
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C
Right. And that's what I want to get to here is this frenzy to get books way before the public has read them. Yeah. I mean, Project Hail Mary was acquired before it was even finished, and the housemaid was a very early pickup. Like, what is the process now for getting these books for producers? Are you getting emails from producers that hear rumors that someone is starting to write something? Or if there is a column in the New York Times that could eventually become a book, is their activity that early now?
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B
Very, very early. You know, there are products that we've sold in book proposal form. You know, I sold hidden figures when it was just a book proposal. You know, they had to. They had to rush the manuscript to be delivered and published by the time in advance. So they had some leeway in advance of the movie. We're reading things at every step of the way. I think it's a conversation that we're having with our partners and with the authors and rights holders. At the end of the day, when's the moment to strike? You know, we knew with Strangers that there was going to be a lot of great press. And, you know, we thought the reviews were gonna be brilliant, which they ended up being. And that really helped with our sales process at that time. But there are plenty of others. You know, I just got back from the London Book Fair a few weeks ago, and there's a book that we're handling that kind of became the media rights book of the fair called White Smoke. It's written under a pseudonym of Nick Brucker. The real life author is Nick Binge, who I do believe is kind of the next Andy Weir, who specifically really writes in the genre space. But this one, it's a great heist thriller, super character forward. That's almost Ocean's Eleven in the Vatican.
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C
Okay.
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B
It's. It's fun, fun excitement across the film and television industry right now.
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C
Okay, so. So besides the boosterism, I want to get to some nitty gritty here. Like what can a. An author who has some heat around an idea or a book proposal or a manuscript agent approaches and says, I can get you this. What are producers paying for rights? Because I've heard that you. It's sort of a volume game now. If you're a producer, you're just trying to scour and find whatever you can to option and then it's like playing the lottery. Maybe some of these books don't become phenomenons or become popular. Some of them do. And then you hit and then there's a frenzy for a studio that wants to make it. When you're doing those option deals, what can an author expect to get and how early would you recommend they do one of these deals?
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B
It's such a range, you know, I think we, we are typically selling projects probably in the, just in the lead up to publication, if it's being published. It's almost, you know, you've almost missed the, that, that moment of reviews hitting and the excitement.
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C
And any producer worth his salt has already heard about the project and evaluated it and decided to either go for it or pass.
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B
The smart producers out there who are really tapped into the book game and the media rights landscape, you know, know what they're doing. We're in touch with them constantly. And the end.
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C
That was always the, the thing about Scott Rudin, the producer, before he got like quasi canceled, he would have relationships in the publishing world in New York, and he could get access to things way before others. At least back in the day. I imagine many producers purport to, or even actually do have those kinds of relationships now.
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B
Well, and also, Matt, like every studio and production company out there has a. What's called a book scout who are out there scouting material across the global landscape.
- [09:58]
C
So 100 grand, 200 grand? What's like, a good book option?
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B
It's such a spectrum. And at the end of the day, I think we are, you know, especially with the changes going on in the film industry right now, you know, our goal is to get it made, not just like, we can continue optioning books until the cows come home. Like, I think. I think our prerogative is setting it up for the best, best Runway, so that it will ultimately, you know, make it to the screen.
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C
And what's the dichotomy right now in the market between fiction and nonfiction? Is nonfiction still hot? There was a time when everybody was looking for rip from the headlines.
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B
Yeah, nonfiction is still hot. I think we represent a lot of publications that, you know, either retain or. Or the journalists themselves who retain the derivative rights to their world.
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C
Well, it used to be that the journalists could get a lot of rights if you wrote for big magazines, and they changed all that. I went back when I was writing for magazines, like, I sold. I sold a small article that I did for Details magazine, which does not exist anymore, to a producer. John Davis bought this article, and he only liked the title, and it was called Whale Hunters. It was about Las Vegas concierges. Yep. And he loved the title. He thought it would be a good Dirty Rotten Scoundrels movie. I got 10 grand. And then they re upped the option. This was tiny. This is 20 years ago. And. And nothing ever came of it. But that used to be a good market for journalists where you could retain the rights. Now, these magazines keep a lot of the rights they have. They try to have businesses built around these rights. Sometimes they kiss in the journalist. Sometimes if you're a big name, you can negotiate that, but it's not really the same. These magazines and newspapers that have tried to create businesses around their nonfiction offerings, that doesn't seem like a great business.
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B
Hey, you know, we're lucky enough to represent a lot of journalists who still have the ability to retain their. Their derivative rights. And so that's been very fruitful in terms of our positioning for. For their articles and their narrative nonfiction place, which I think is really, really exciting. So those opportunities still do exist.
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C
Did you see this Atlantic piece about the cartel Olympics?
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B
I didn't.
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C
Oh, my God. It's a hilarious article. McKay Coppins wrote it. And it was basically about how this journalist was approached by a producer, a manager, this guy who manages the killers and wanted to produce something. And he had heard this story. This. This guy was shopping his life rights where he purported to be kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel and forced to perform in essentially an Olympic Games amongst captive people. And the losers would be murdered.
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B
Wow.
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C
Pretty compelling story. Right? And the producer wanted to hire the journalists to investigate this life rights claim to see if it was real. So they, and this was an example. What I thought was fascinating was they were trying to engineer a movie out of this guy's life rights, but they wanted someone to essentially legitimize it through a big article in the Atlantic or wherever. And it turned into this whole saga. I won't ruin the article, but the end of the day is it didn't really matter to the producer whether it was true or false. Just the notion of the investigation was enough. Like, have you heard of that before? Where journalists are now hired to legitimize certain, you know, stories that are out there.
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B
It's interesting, I think that there's definitely conversations from producers that maybe they can reverse engineer it through because there's all
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C
these companies, journalists, Mark Bowles started a company like that and there's lots of others where they're trying to. Or engineer the article alongside the rights adaptation.
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B
Yeah. You know, a lot of the time though, the journalists that we're working with, you know, they're, they're journalists at heart and so they want to be able to tell the story and find the story that they want to tell rather than try to find the movie within, you know, the, the, the article or piece that they may be, you know, trying to shoehorn in for a magazine.
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C
Yeah. And it's not a great business a lot. All these journalists who think they're going to go to Hollywood and become millionaires because they can generate ip. Like, they soon find that it takes five years to get something off the ground. They're like, wait a second, I gave up my, you know, New York magazine job to come to la, and now I'm sitting around doing nothing while they wait to decide whether, you know, this producer is interested in, in, you know, developing my project.
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C
All right, so we talked a little bit about the hot genres. I want to talk a little bit about the hot authors specifically. We do a lot of power rankings on this show. Give me your power rankings of Authors right now, irrespective of UTA clients. I don't, don't plug your book here. Give us like, is Stephen King still number one?
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B
Stephen King feels like he's still number one. I would also put Harlan Coben up there. You look at his track record in terms of the amount of books that he is publishing.
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C
Yeah.
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B
On like an annual basis these days. And the amount that have, you know, turned into series, whether they're for the US Audience or kind of in local, for global audiences. There is massive daily over in Netflix.
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C
Okay, who's that? Is Michael Connelly on there? He's got Lincoln Lawyer. He did Bosh. Like, is he still up there?
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B
Michael Connelly is up there. Absolutely.
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C
For movies, it's got to be Colleen Hoover right now, Right?
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B
Colleen's having an amazing year. You know, I think reminders of him that she adapted and produced, you know, is a great, great turn for Universal. And, you know, we're really, really excited to see Verity this summer directed by Michael Showalter that I think is going to be a big hit. So who else, who else, you know, selfishly, I love Ellen Hildebrand, you know, who, you know, had the perfect couple, has, has the five star weekend coming out this summer that we're really, really excited about for Peacock. Also really excited about Liane Moriarty, the author of Big Little Lies, who has Big Little Truths coming, coming out this fall that will be the lies to Truth.
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C
Okay.
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B
An actual, it's an actual.
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C
So take us through that. So what. So obviously that's the follow up to a big franchise. Did HBO have the, have the rights to go after that or was it an open market?
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B
Yeah, we had to make a deal with them. So, you know, there's, there's.
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C
You had to do a deal with hbo?
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B
Yes.
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C
Yeah.
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B
There were character rights, you know, contractually in, in, in the past deal for Big Little Lies, of course.
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C
And for the authors that are one tier down or two tiers down, what kind of expectations should they have if they are writing something that they feel is cinematic? I get asked this all the time. I have friends who've written books. I have people in the publishing world who say, I want to, I want to know the pitfalls here of signing up with a producer who's asking me to sign an option deal that looks a little sketchy and they're not going to hire a big entertainment lawyer to look at it yet because they're not at that level. What are the red flags in a deal?
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B
I would say no, no. Right. Of reversion which basically means that, you know, if, you know, said producer or said buyer ends up exercising their right to purchase the rights outright, that you have no, you know, escape hatch. You no way of.
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C
You want to be able to get it back if nobody's doing anything.
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B
I just had to unravel a deal at a, you know, major network with a deal that was made over 20 years ago for a, you know, big legendary author, and there was no reversion.
- [18:14]
C
See, that sucks.
- [18:16]
B
That's where you get into inherit that and. And, you know, it's. But it happens, and people take advantage.
- [18:24]
C
So what do you do? Do you end up paying them?
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B
No, we, We. We've. We. We figured it out.
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C
You figured it out, meaning you got it. You got it out. Yeah.
- [18:32]
B
I think leverage a. It's also incumbent on us as. As representatives. I leverage my own personal relationships to have it just not sit on a shelf and so that, you know, someone's work can hopefully be seen by a new audience.
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C
Yeah. And after 20 years, they're not doing anything with it.
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B
Yep.
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C
You know, they just probably sat on it because they could.
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B
Yeah.
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C
I imagine authors get enamored by a pitch, a charismatic producer or someone who can come along and say, listen, I did this with this property and I turned it into a global hit. I. I will do the same for yours. And those deals probably look terrible.
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B
Correct. I would also say, like, just in the instance of a book that has legs for sequels ahead and selling all of them and not being protected in case you write eight more book series and then it's a big hit and you only get paid outright for that first deal.
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C
Right. That's a. That's a red flag as well. And with this volume game with producers out there, like, literally scouring the corners of the Internet trying to find untangled material, it seems like almost everything decent is tied up. Like this notion of coming across a book on the book stand and reading it on a Sunday and thinking, this would make a great movie. I'm gonna like that someone has the rights.
- [20:01]
B
It does happen. Like, I picked up a graphic novel by a guy named Nick d', Arnaso, who ended up becoming the first graphic novelist ever to be long listed for the Booker Prize. I literally picked up his first graphic novel from a bookstore and cold emailed him. He had no representation, and the rest is history.
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C
And you sold it.
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B
Yep. It can still happen. Very much so. You know, we all also are getting asked all the time for what are those gems that have fallen out of option that may have, you Know, with, you know, there was. There was, you know, a few years ago, it was like everything was getting sold into limited series and then a bit of the TV market on the limited space fell out and they were like, we're not. This is not financially incentivizing. I don't know if we're going to be able to make this many. So. So a lot have fallen out and then getting, you know, resold sometimes even for a much greater sum on the feature side.
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C
So maybe there is an opportunity there to take something that had been in development for TV and reposition 100%.
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B
You know, one of. One of my giant white whales is. Is hoping to help shepherd Erik Larson's the Devil in the White City to the screen. And, you know, that had.
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C
Oh, that's been. They've been trying forever. Didn't MRC had the rights for a while. And I mean, that's.
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B
I was almost supposed to go at Hulu with, you know, a creative team that fell apart, unfortunately, and it's been reset up at 20th on the feature side.
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C
Yeah. And getting the author to have input is a. Is a dicey question because this. What is her name? Jeanette McPurdy. She had that show that was going to go with Jennifer Aniston, the. I forget what the title was, but that fell apart. I understand, because of her involvement and she was so protective of the material that finally they all just threw up their hands.
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F
Jennette McCurdy, I'm glad my Mom Died,
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C
is the end of the book. Yes, that was. I wrote about that last year because it was so difficult to do that adaptation with the author involved that they just essentially abandoned it.
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B
Well, hey, it's the rub for anytime you want to option a book, we tell our authors that you lose a semblance of control. You. You just do. And even with, you know, all the creative approvals to try to ask for, you know, it's. You're giving something up by optioning it to a studio or streamer.
- [22:24]
F
How do those conversations go, though? Like, do authors usually demand or really want to be included as a writer or producer on the film?
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C
J.K. rowling got her husband to write the Fantastic Beasts movie.
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F
Well, somebody at her level, sure, but I. A more standard deal, like with a writer who's not incredibly famous and powerful yet. How do those conversations go about how involved they are in the movie?
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B
It depends. It depends on their interest level in doing it. I have authors that really would love to be the one to adapt it. And then we hear from our studio Partners that they have this big a list writer that they know can be able to. Who's able to deliver a show or a feature to their liking and would rather go there. But, you know, we then build in protections in terms of them being a producer on the project, maybe joining the writers room, having meaningful consultation rights and being involved. And also, it really just starts at inception, where we want to partner them with people that understand how to work with authors and speak to them and keep them involved.
- [23:25]
C
Do you feel like there is an appetite on the studio side for action franchises and bigger properties now that the kind of superhero era is less than what it was?
- [23:37]
B
Very much so. I mean, the book White Smoke that I brought up is a great heist action thriller set against the Vatican. And he's planning on writing more. More books in the series using the same team, kind of in an Ocean's Eleven or Slow Horses sort of manner, but in different international, global, global outposts.
- [23:56]
C
When you're selling the book before it has become a huge hit, it's tougher for a studio to make a gamble on that. They gotta love the material and not love the audience that the book already has.
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B
They're betting on what's on the page, which is what we have to do as well.
- [24:14]
C
Yeah. But I feel like a lot of studios won't hit that green light button until they see it both ways, though.
- [24:21]
B
I think that a studio can really help market a book and put some extra chutzpah behind it so that both are aligned for the same thing. They want the book to be a big hit just as they want the movie to be a big hit.
- [24:34]
C
Yeah. What else is not in favor anymore? Is the erotic thriller out?
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B
No. I think they're seeing a lot of studios go after projects, I think post the success of Housemaid. Yeah, I think that that could be a domestic erotic thriller. I think there's going to be many. They're making a sequel to that one. There's going to be many more.
- [24:57]
C
Well, she wrote additional books. It was interesting to see that author. She announced that the movie was better than her book. You don't see that very often.
- [25:05]
B
You don't? You don't.
- [25:08]
C
That's sort of a dream for producers like, oh, you like the book? This is. The author says this is better. This is a good way into this conversation. Do you feel like that there has to be talent attached to. To these book properties?
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B
We don't.
- [25:23]
C
You don't feel that way?
- [25:24]
B
No.
- [25:24]
C
It feels like typically when this stuff sells, it's first an actor's production company or a filmmaker's production company gets their hands on it, they then take it to the market and the studio buys the package.
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B
Hey, I think that, you know, we definitely are looking at projects, you know, where it could actually absolutely be additive and some of the time it's getting, you know, a piece of talent to, to read and make a definitive decision at such an early stage, you know, as you had pointed out. But if things start to get hot, you know, there are a lot of great actor led production companies that, you know, the, the principal, whether it's, you know, Margot Robbie or Benedict Cumberbatch or Emma Stone or, you know, or Reese, you know, they show up in your inboxes or show up on your, you know, at your office to say how, how much they love a project.
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C
Does Rhys require that her company get the rights to do the movie before she makes a book, one of her book club?
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B
They do not.
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C
They don't do that.
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B
Very separate. Interesting. But you know, I wonder why not. He's a fierce.
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C
Seems like that'd be good leverage. Cause they can guarantee some book sales 100%.
- [26:34]
B
She's a fierce advocate. I mean, I had a great experience in Little Fires Everywhere with her, which was a book that I had given to Lauren Neustadter, her producing partner, when it was in galley form. And that was Celeste's dream partner for it. And Reese is not a client here. But you know, we gave it to Lauren, she read it over a weekend and Reese was in Celeste's inbox by Monday.
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C
And it worked.
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B
And it did. Hey, it worked. It worked creatively. And you know, the.
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C
No, I mean the pitch from Reese personally, 100%.
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B
But I do think, look at, you know, the.
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C
I think, yeah, there's a reason why it's like, oh, how does Margot Robbie keep getting these interesting book adaptations? How does you know Reese? It's because they're big stars and they have star power that can coerce these authors into doing it.
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B
And the readers, I think that that's, you know, I think as we look at kind of the outset of like who's gonna make a great partner for my client? I wanna find someone who's actually read the book, who understands it, is going to, you know, treat them as a real partner here.
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C
Last question. Give me an author that, that you have not mentioned previously that is going to be big in the next three to five years for adaptations.
- [27:48]
B
Yeah, there's a, there's a novelist named Madeline Cash who I'm obsessed with. I don't think she's 30 yet. She's just, just about to turn 30. She debut novel called Lost Lands, that published in January, that is one of the singularly funniest novels I've read in quite some time on a sentence level. Sparked a big auction that I can't talk about just yet, but I think she's going to be one to watch.
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C
That's a good answer. See, that was substantive. I like that, that kind of answer. All right, well, it's an interesting area of the business. I will call you when I write a book, which will be never.
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B
I'll be here.
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C
All right, thank you.
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B
Thanks so much.
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C
Matt. We are back with the call sheet. Craig, I don't even have to ask. I know you will not be seeing the Super Mario Galaxy movie this weekend.
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F
I'm offended that you would say that. I, I, I, I have seen the first one. I watched it on a plane and I enjoyed it. I'm a big fan of Mario. I played all those games growing up.
- [28:40]
C
All right, you're not going this weekend. I, on the other, you know, we're
- [28:43]
F
in the era of millennial nostalgia, so Mario is, is right in my lane.
- [28:47]
C
Okay. Well, I will be there this weekend with my son and a bunch of his friends. They are already excited. And it's interesting for this one, the first Mario movie also opened over the Easter holiday five day weekend and they got to 204 million domestic for that opening. Yeah. Yet the tracking for this weekend is only at about 175, 180 for the five day. I don't know what happened there. I think the tracking is kind of artificially low here. Maybe Universal is lowballing. So I actually, I mean, it's an obvious over for me. I think it's going to get near where the first one did. It seems like they're hitting all the same notes and the reviews don't matter. The reviews weren't great, but the reviews don't matter in this movie. I think the goodwill from the first one is going to easily get it over 175. Do you agree?
- [29:38]
F
I do. It's also been, it's been three years to the date almost because it was 2023, April. And usually, I mean these big animated movies, you look at Frozen, Inside Out, Toy Story and every single Toy Story open bigger than the one before it. Incredibles. I have to imagine the sequel and all the goodwill it earned amongst kids is going to pay off.
- [29:56]
C
Yeah. I don't know if it's going to open to more than 204 but I'm easily taking the over. I mean we should. Let's set the line. Let's get a little more bullish here and assume that they're lowballing. Let's set the line at 185 and I will still take the over. I think this movie is going to do 200 this this week. Remember, this is the five day not the three day. It's opening the today Wednesday.
- [30:17]
F
I would agree. It feels like once parents and kids know that they like something they will go to the new version of that thing.
- [30:23]
C
Yes, exactly. I know. And I will tell you all about it. I'm sure there will be a million Easter eggs. I don't understand and there will be a Jack Black song and all of it. So yeah, we'll be there. All right. That's the show for today. I want to thank my guest Jason Richmond, producer Craig Horbeck. Art Jon Jones and I want to thank you. We will see you one more time this.