IP Picks: 2 Spy Tales; a Christmas Romance; Making of a Real-Life Radical
In a special preview of The Optionist, also find out about a gritty Southern revenge thriller & a Mark Twain public domain title I love
Ed note: We’re letting you preview today’s issue of The Optionist, a standalone subscription newsletter from Ankler Media that identifies IP available for adaptation. Led by Andy Lewis, The Optionist curates a list of promising IP each week from books (new and backlist), long-form journalism, short stories, graphic novels and wherever IP can be found. Offering more than just a logline, the picks include comps, a short summary, casting suggestions and rep info. It’s like having an extra set of hands on your dev team.
And The Optionist delivers ideas that get bought and developed — far more than we can track. A few of Andy’s favorite optioned IP picks include a James Bond spoof, a backlist title about a legendary unsolved robbery, a medical procedural about the federal government’s elite rare-disease detectives and a high-concept sci-fi procedural that places a murder investigation against the arrival of a three-mile-tall alien corpse.
Optionist subscribers get the newsletter every week before noon PT on Friday; we’re previewing today’s newsletter, available to all Ankler readers today with a link to a special offer for new subscribers. Subscribe to The Optionist individually or as a group subscription and read on for a taste of an IP list that is like no other (and that your rivals are already subscribed to).
Welcome to The Optionist. Thanks for reading along! I’m really excited about this week’s lineup, but before we start the drumroll, I’ve got an overlooked public-domain gem that someone should jump on.
Between Ron Chernow’s recent 1,200-page biography and Percival Everett’s award-winning 2024 Huckleberry Finn re-imaging, James (soon to be a major motion picture!), Mark Twain is having a moment. Not that the granddaddy of American letters has ever gone out of style.
I've always been a massive fan of the artist formerly known as Samuel Clemens, and all of the recent attention prompted me to dip back into his classics. His best stories are absolute gems, and many of them remain surprisingly relevant a century and a half after Tom Sawyer made the author a literary superstar. Twain’s been adapted for the screen on more than a hundred occasions (per IMDB), and there’s at least another seven projects currently in development. The majority — big shocker — are based on either Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn (with The Prince and the Pauper and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court trailing behind). One of my favorite Twain novels has never gotten much attention here in Hollywood, but I think it’s ready for its close-up: The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson.
If you’re not familiar with the novel, it’s a switched-at-birth story set in the Antebellum South about two young boys: Chambers, a light-skinned enslaved child, and Tom, the master’s son. When the boys are grown, Chambers-as-Tom learns the truth about his parentage, gets blackmailed by his birth mother, murders an uncle to gain control of his inheritance, and then blames the crime on a couple of visiting Italian noblemen. But he’s caught after a local lawyer most people consider to be dim-witted (the titular Puddn’head) uses the new science of fingerprinting to prove that he’s not only the guilty party but also that he’s not the rightful heir. Chambers is re-enslaved and sold down the river. Meanwhile, the real Tom returns to his rightful place but finds he doesn’t fit in with either the white or Black community.
Puddn’head Wilson has only been adapted twice for the screen — first as a silent film in 1916 and much later as an episode of PBS’ American Playhouse in 1984. Someone should take another swing at it. Structurally, it’s a nice blend of mixed-identity drama and courtroom procedural. Thematically, it grapples with a bunch of big ideas that are still relevant today (nature vs. nurture, how do we know that people are who they say they are, the role of technology in catching criminals and the distrust of science and expertise).
It may sound strange to say about a writer and humorist who was born 25 years before the start of the Civil War, but Twain has a lot to teach us about how we live today. Plus, he’s about to be on the tips of a lot of people’s tongues thanks to producer Steven Spielberg and director Taika Waititi’s big-screen adaptation of James. If you’re willing to explore one of the author’s deeper cuts, Puddn’head Wilson is a story that feels freshly relevant and allows you to draft in that old Twain magic. And did I mention it’s in the public domain?
🔒 This Week: A pair of incredible true stories plus a sweet second-chance romance
On to this week’s picks! I’ve got two fantastic true stories that are both fascinating psychological portraits: One is a drama about a woman who’s struggling with a dark family secret; the other is the harrowing tale of a young man radicalized by the internet. And just to lighten things up a bit, I’ve also got an incredibly sweet and life-affirming holiday romance that’s ready to become a new Christmas classic. Plus, spies and more spies!
The full lineup for paid subscribers:
🕵️♂️ A compelling drama that asks: What would happen if you discovered that your family members were actually infamous Nazi spies?
👵🏻 Ready for primetime! A cozy procedural in the vein of Matlock and The Thursday Murder Club featuring a retired FBI agent-turned-landlady/PI.
☠️ A hot, Ozark-esque Southern crime thriller that’s just out to publishers.
🎄 A holiday classic in the making! Two people grieving the early deaths of their spouses fall in love while bonding over their love of Christmas movies.
🛜 A timely true-crime thriller pitched as “Badlands for the era of internet conspiracy weirdos.”
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