Showtime has acquired Bill Clinton and James Patterson's The President Is Missing (Little, Brown and Knopf, June 2018) for development as a TV series. The novel is about the disappearance of a U.S. president. (Deadline Hollywood)
E! is developing Karen McManus' bestselling YA novel One of Us is Lying (Delacorte Press/ Random House, May) for television. The book is set up to echo John Hughes' Brat Pack film The Breakfast Club, and opens with five high school students, from different social groups, entering detention. The twist, though, is that only four leave, with one winding up dead. (Deadline Hollywood)
Big Talk Productions has optioned Jonathan Stroud's YA series Lockwood & Co. for television. (The first book in the series, The Screaming Staircase, was published by Disney-Hyperion in 2013.) The series is about London facing an epidemic of supernatural entities (Deadline Hollywood)
Hallmark Movies and Mysteries has optioned The Christmas Cottage by Samantha Chase (Self-published, 2012) about a cottage that brings couples lasting love. (Pub Mktpl)
Sony Pictures has acquired Summer of Night by Dan Simmons (February 1991, G.P. Putnam's Sons), about terrifying events in a Midwestern town. (Deadline Hollywood)
Scott Rudin Productions has acquired The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, September), about an Irish Catholic family. (Deadline Hollywood)
RCO Europe has acquired the YA fantasy novel The Red Harlequin by Roberto RIcci (Amazon Digital Services, May 2013), set in a world where people live wearing masks. (Licensing Corner)
