‘Heated Rivalry’ Effect: Bidding Wars and 7-Figure IP as Romance Sizzles
Top agents on prices, most-wanted authors, hot sub-genres — and an ‘insatiable’ audience
I cover TV and host Ankler Agenda. I interviewed Heated Rivalry’s casting directors about how they found Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams and dug into agents’ concerns about a Netflix-Warner Bros. deal. Email me at elaine@theankler.com
Whoo boy. You guys weren’t kidding when you told me — after hearing an interview snippet on Ankler Agenda last week — that you wanted more from the casting directors of Heated Rivalry. So welcome to the hundreds of new Ankler subscribers who signed up to read my full interview with Jenny Lewis and Sara Kay, where they dropped details on Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams’ hot chemistry read, what it was like to visit the set, and seeing the famed Shane Hollander Team Canada fleece in person.
The circumstances around Heated Rivalry’s shot to stardom are in some ways unique — Canadian, little-known talent, etc. — but the underpinnings of its success have been brewing for a while. Look at the impact that Bridgerton, also based on popular books, has had on the media rights and TV adaptation market. (IYKYK: huge moment for sexy cottages.) Didn’t it feel like just a minute ago that we were all talking about Dad TV and Guy With A Gun shows being in vogue?
Well, as any fan of romance novels will tell you: Love, as a genre, has never gone out of style — it’s just been unfairly dismissed as treacly, or worse, trashy. And there’s been a perception in the industry, as Universal Studio Group EVP Jordan Moblo told my fellow Series Business columnist Lesley Goldberg recently, that romance is a difficult genre for TV “because romance books have a happily ever after, and it’s a closed ending. We’re looking for books that lend themselves to multiple seasons.” But romance’s huge fandoms aren’t interested in those arguments. They’re interested in seeing more of the stories they love onscreen.
“It’s so great that this area is getting the recognition it deserves. But it’s also kind of funny to me that romance is ever a dirty word,” WME literary media agent Carolina Beltran tells me. “It’s really satisfying to see the market come up to speed on what, in my eyes, was already a pretty robust business.”
For today, I talked to Beltran, UTA’s Mirabel Michelson and Verve’s Emma Kapson about the super-spicy, multi-layered romance market now, who’s earning big and what genres are popping. I dig into:
The top romance author selling IP to Hollywood right now
The going payday for an “A+ level” romance IP option
Why a certain kind of romance is booming while quieter, more literary material struggles
The romance subgenres grabbing new fandoms — including a “huge” one headed for screens
Why YA cooled on the page but keeps heating up on TV
How Netflix and Amazon fed an “insatiable” Gen Z romance audience — and their strategy to keep them hooked
The publishing-screen-merch flywheel that keeps romance growing
“The missing puzzle piece”: Getting romance back onto movie screens, and whether Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights can crack the code