Jungerian Theory
It's been eight years since Sebastian Junger rode The Perfect Storm (Norton, 1997) to fame, but no one would accuse the intrepid reporter of resting on his royalties. Junger has spent much of his post-Storm life covering civil wars and genocides (in Afghanistan, Liberia, Bosnia, etc.). Judging from his next book, however, the author hasn't quite finished exploring humanity's dark side. UTA'S Howard Sanders is out now to writers, producers and directors with Junger's A Death in Belmont (Norton, May 2006), featuring Albert DeSalvo, better known as the Boston Strangler. Turns out DeSalvo, considered to be the country's first serial killer of the modern era, was working in Junger's childhood home the day a neighborhood woman was found murdered. Junger uses the crime—and DeSalvo's eventual confession—to explore racism, the criminal justice system and a violent chapter in U.S. history. Any film deal for Belmont is likely to fetch a nice premium over The Perfect Storm, since Warner Bros. presciently (or luckily) optioned Storm long before it became an international bestseller. (Although, as agent Stuart Krichevsky notes, with the movie tie-in selling an additional one million copies, "Everyone's happy.")
Quoth the Raven
No one mixes fact and fiction like William Morris's Suzanne Gluck. The agency's film rep Alicia Gordon is out now with bestselling Gluck client Matthew Pearl's The Poe Shadow (Random, May 2006), about a young lawyer who investigates the premature death of Edgar Allan Poe. Gluck seems to have cornered the market in historical thrillers in which fictional characters mix it up with real-life icons. (Teddy Roosevelt made an appearance in client Caleb Carr's The Alienist, while SigmundFreudsolves a Manhattan murder in Jed Rubenfeld's upcoming The Name of Action.) The agency is said to be targeting writers and directors for The Poe Shadow, a strategy that seems to have paid off for Pearl's first effort, TheDante Club (Random)—rising Hollywood screenwriting team Bill Cooper and Adam Collage optioned the 2003 bestseller. Imagine Entertainment is set to shop the duo's adapted script to studios shortly.
The Man Who Rocks the Cradle
Not content to skewer New York society in The Devil WearsPrada and The Nanny Diaries, Hollywood sets its sights on the Manhattan elite once again with Holly Peterson's The Manny, a roman à clef set on the Upper East Side. Sony is in negotiations for film rights. The title character in question refers to a hunky male snowboarder hired by an overworked New Yorker to look after her kids. The attraction they feel for each other boils over when she discovers her husband's cheating ways. An exec who read it calls it a cross between Desperate Housewives and The Nanny Diaries. Peterson knows of which she speaks: she grew up and lives on the Upper East Side with her husband and three children. Her sister-in-law is Wendy Finerman, the producer of The Devil Wears Prada. Dial acquired The Manny from Inkwell Management's Kim Witherspoon in a reported two-book, $1-million deal. CAA's Brian Siberell handles film rights.
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