IP Picks🔎: 5 Murder Tales — 'Ozark' Vibes, Road Trip Hell, Bad Magic
➕ A bar trivia night goes very very wrong
Welcome to The Optionist. Thanks for reading along!
Before we dive into this week’s picks, I want to go around the horn and share some things I’ve been reading lately that I think will interest you…
I’ve been fascinated by the career of Taylor Jenkins Reid for a while now. With her latest novel, Atmosphere, topping the NYT bestseller list and a handful of adaptations currently in the works, it’s worth checking out this recent profile that ran in TIME. Reid certainly has her critics and there’s a knee-jerk tendency to pit her success against other fiction writers, arguing that she sucks up all of the oxygen in the room in the same way that big franchise movies crowd out mid- and low-budget films. But my takeaway is a little different.
To me, Reid is the perfect example of why publishers need to have more patience with authors as they establish a brand. Reid was five novels into her career before she found real success with 2017’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Of course, she rocketed to an even loftier plateau with her next novel, 2019’s Daisy Jones & the Six. There has been a significant halo effect on her sales, which has generated substantial returns for her publishers. It’s a success that nobody saw coming based on her earlier books. And that success was only possible because they continued to invest in her as her numbers grew. As the old saying goes, you’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince. Or, in this case, your chart-topping princess.
Turning to a higher power… I had already highlighted this article about the rise of “biblical fiction” when the news broke about Wonder Project’s new faith-based streaming service. There’s something bigger going on here that not enough folks are talking about. If you also factor in the success of The Chosen, the Prime Video series about the life of Jesus Christ, it’s clear that the audience is growing for biblical stories.
Check out this story from Entertainment Strategy Guy over at The Ankler for proof:
I think a lot of us hear “faith-based” and think “not for me,” but there's a reason why the Bible was the OG bestseller. It’s packed with great stories. Biblical fiction presents updated takes on these stories with today’s audience in mind. While a biblical adaptation doesn’t need underlying IP — the Bible is also the OG public domain property — I think using known characters from the Bible offers a potential development shortcut with a take that’s already been road-tested on a print audience.
Next, I want to rewind and give a quick update on a few stories I’ve flagged here before: The theft of $100 million in jewelry at a California truck stop was one of my favorite crime tales from a few years back. And now it looks like the thieves have been caught. With this latest development, I’m more convinced than ever that there’s a great procedural to be made. If you’re interested, the LAT has had the best — and most comprehensive — coverage since day one.
Finally, this Aeon essay about UFO abductions reminded me that I had flagged a book about Barney and Betty Hill, a couple who became famous in the ‘60s for claiming that aliens had abducted them. This piece springboards off a new(ish) book that looks at the UFO phenomenon from a global perspective. I really think there could be an incredibly cool project that looks at the alien-abduction boom in a way that’s connected with our current obsession with conspiracy theories.
And while we’re on the topic of E.T.s, I loved this history of the Martian craze that hit at the turn of the 20th century, when telescopes finally became powerful enough to show us the red planet's surface in detail. I’ve had it on my “maybe” list for weeks. And while I haven’t quite figured out what to do with it yet, I know there’s a great doc here. As for something scripted, I’m less sure of that. But I do know that I can't get it out of my head, which says something. If nothing else, it’s a fascinating read that is surprisingly relatable to today.
🔒 This Week: Thrills, Magic and Murder
On to this week’s picks! We’ve got a throwback thriller that would make for a great, Tarantino-esque movie, another thriller in the mold of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, a whimsical adventure with magic that has real series potential and a couple of crackling murder mysteries. The full line-up:
🚐 A ‘70s-set road trip turns deadly when a couple in an RV picks up the wrong hitchhikers — think The Hitcher meets Natural Born Killers.
🧞♀️ A fantasy-thriller with bite, as a woman tasked with protecting magical objects discovers the organization she works for isn’t what it seems.
🧐 A bar trivia night turns into a murder investigation, complete with rival teams, buried secrets, and a quizmaster with something to hide.
🥃 Ex-moonshiners, family drama, and a dead body at a 50th birthday bash — this one’s got major Ozark energy.
🍷 A slow-burn Southern thriller about a woman returning home to unravel her sister’s decades-old disappearance — with echoes of Sharp Objects.
