IP Picks🔎: A #Girlboss Under the Microscope
➕ a lighthearted supernatural whodunit and a survivalist experiment gone wrong
Welcome to The Optionist. As always, thanks for reading along.
I've been thinking a lot about the two big movies that I, along with what seems like half the country, saw and loved last weekend — Oppenheimer and Barbie — and what lessons about IP we might take from their success.
At a basic level, they underscore the continuing importance of underlying IP to moviemaking and how we should think about that term broadly. Oppenheimer is based on a bestselling book and Barbie is based, of course, on a toy.
Sometimes it seems "IP" is thrown around as a dirty word, implying a bankruptcy of ideas. To me, IP is neither good nor bad. In the right hands, it's not the antithesis to creativity, but a spur to it; in the wrong hands you just get junk. (I have a few examples in mind but won’t single anyone out.)
The filmmakers of both Barbie and Oppenheimer took IP and spun it in creative directions. It is easy to imagine a version of Barbie that's bad without Greta Gerwig's flair and Chris Nolan had to boil down a 721-page book, American Prometheus, into a three-hour movie, which isn’t easy. The final product is not always self-evident in the underlying material. It underscores my favorite thing about the creative process in Hollywood — that it's a team sport. No one made these things alone. Indeed, American Prometheus wasn't even written alone. Original author Martin Sherwin got stuck and it was only by bringing in Kai Bird as co-author that the book got across the finish line. Meanwhile, Gerwig leaned on partner (professional and personal) Noah Baumbach to pen the Barbie script with her.
I like to think of The Optionist as a small part of this team sport. Our job is to tee up good material, explain why it would work on screen and give a few suggestions how. There will be a million hands involved after — a producer to option, a writer to adapt, set designers and cinematographers to create a distinct look, and on and on — but our job is to get the ball rolling.
The point of The Optionist is to make your work easier and more efficient to free you up for the other parts. Hunting down material is a full-time job. For every pick in The Optionist, I’ve probably combed through a dozen or more possibilities. One person can't farm the garden, harvest the vegetables, cook the meal and wait the tables at the same time. As Hillary Clinton reminded us once (and something I quote all the time), "It takes a village."
This week’s picks include a pair of light horror stories and an expose of one of the buzziest start-ups of the last decade. The full lineup:
A based-in-fact drama about the rise of a millennial start up with a cult-like following, and its controversial female founder.
A supernatural mystery that finds a young psychic and her ghost sidekick trying to solve an English country-manor murder.
A spiky horror thriller that intertwines three stories about women in distress in mysterious circumstances and unites them at the end with a surprise twist.
A real-life period thriller that recounts the story of the 1980s Silicon Valley executive who stole nuclear secrets for the Russians and was then caught by the FBI.
A tragic drama about two women and their teenage son who decided to live off the grid in remote Colorado, but didn’t survive their first winter.
BOOKS I LIKE (current)
Drama
For fans of WeCrashed and The Dropout
Potential logline: The inside story of the rise of Glossier, the beauty brand that went from a part-time blog run by The Hills bit player Emily Weiss to a $1B company in less than a decade.
Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss's Glossier by Marisa Meltzer (Atria, Sept.) This is a fascinating story about the rise of beauty brand Glossier and its founder Emily Weiss, even though I was hoping for a bit more of an edge. When the book was announced last year, it was pitched as a takedown, but the finished product is friendlier than that — and a narrative with a definitive resolution a la WeWork or The Dropout. (You can get a feel for Meltzer’s take in this 2020 VF piece she wrote about the company.) Still, even with those reservations, there's so much here that works in the genre of the business biopic, I think it really taps into a young female audience. For those unfamiliar with the Glossier story, Emily Weiss who was a peripheral player on The Hills (she was the super intern featured when Lauren Conrad did a stint at Teen Vogue), started a beauty blog, "Into the Gloss," in 2010 and turned it into the cult beauty products company Glossier in 2014. By 2019 it was a rare female-led unicorn (i.e., a startup valued at $1B). The main thrust of the story is how this happened, what the culture at Glossier was (not always great) and Weiss's role as founder and CEO. Amid the success, there were some misfires and eventually, in 2018, Weiss stepped aside as CEO, which makes for a good ending (albeit not as dramatic a one as say bankruptcy or jail). Still, the story captures a moment in the transition from reality stars to influencers, the rise of the “girlboss” and early aughts start-up mania; particularly the hype for new direct-to-consumer brands that aimed at rendering legacy competitors mostly obsolete. Weiss herself remains somewhat opaque — she's shrewd and controlling about revealing much of her interior thoughts or private life. She comes across as remote and cold, but that's part of the fascination with her. I think there's a female audience that would love her story. I would love/hate this show in the way that I am equal parts repulsed/fascinated by Goop and what I thought Bama Rush was going to be. Indeed, Glossier really feels like a sorority as start-up. I’m not the target audience here, but the audience this is aimed at will love it. REPS: Tara Timinsky/Grandview
Mystery/Supernatural
For fans of Knives Out
Potential logline: A slacker medium and her ghost sidekick/best friend meet a ghost during a birthday weekend at an English country manor who seeks their help solving an old murder.
Grave Expectations by Alice Bell (Vintage, Sept.) I was charmed by this fun, funny, and totally enjoyable mystery with some light horror/supernatural elements that has real youthful appeal. Slacker Claire plays at being a medium — she's aided by the fact that she can actually see ghosts. Case in point: her best friend, Sophie, who went missing at 17, returned as a spirit — and only Claire knows she was murdered. Now in her early 30s, Claire takes a gig as the weekend entertainment for a wealthy woman's 80th birthday party at an English country manor. While conducting a seance, Claire encounters a ghost asking for their help in solving a murder from the previous year's party. Obsessed with crime shows and figuring Sophie's spiritual abilities give them a leg up, Claire decides she'll solve the case. The pair team up with some members of the oddball family — sarcastic teen Alex and ex-cop Sebastian — and have a series of often very funny encounters on the road to the solution. There's a lot of humor and heart at the core here between Claire and Sophie and their relationship. Alex is also a great character (and is written as non-binary). Bell has a good ear for banter. Plus, the kooky family provides laughs — c'mon just the phrase "Chekhov's sparkly purple dildo" should have you chuckling even before you know its role. The book is a purely entertaining light-hearted romp. It's easy to see how you could spin out Claire and Sophie into an ongoing series, or a series of films — I think this book works best as a film. It is set in Britain and the pop culture references, etc., are British. REPS: Dana Spector/CAA
Thriller/Horror
For fans of Squid Games
Potential logline: Three women are thrown into mysterious and dangerous situations where they must use their knowledge of movie and book tropes to survive and eventually unite to free themselves.
Good Girls Don't Die by Christina Henry (Berkley, Nov.) I liked the creative structure, premise and twists in this horror-thriller novel with three separate plot lines that converge at the end. Each stands alone as a compelling story centered on a female lead. The first story features a woman who wakes up with no memory of her husband and child — she thinks she's in a strange house with people she doesn't know. The second tale centers on a woman on a weekend trip to a remote cabin with people she's not sure she trusts. The third is about a woman who is kidnapped and forced to participate in a dystopian survival game. All the stories reference and riff on the classic stories that inspired each — Stepford Wives and Truman Show in the first, slasher movies like Halloween and Cabin in the Woods in the second, or Maze Runner and Hunger Games in the third. Playing with the audience’s knowledge of certain story archetypes and tropes is not new, but it’s executed here well. And it's super fun when the stories converge, the women come together and we learn what's behind the mystery — there are enough clues and hints along the way to give people a sense of what's going on without providing quite enough information to spoil it. (Hint: Think Antebellum.) The villain and the motivations are very of the moment — riffing on tech bros and sexism — in ways that will resonate with the audience. The book is laid out as four separate sections, but an adaptation might work best threading the stories, both to set up expectations properly in the beginning and to keep viewers engaged. REPS: Joe Veltre/Gersh
Podcast
Spy Thriller/History
For fans of Halt & Catch Fire and The Americans
Potential logline: In early ’80s Silicon Valley, a tech executive steals nuclear missile secrets to sell to the Russians and is pursued by the FBI.
Spy Valley: An Engineer's Nuclear Betrayal (Project Brazen/PRX, six episodes, first two out now) This mix of corporate spying and international espionage is fascinating and thrilling and could be the basis for an exciting film. The bones of the story: It's the early 1980s and Silicon Valley engineer James Harper schemes to steal sensitive information about American missile production and sell it to the Soviets for quick cash — his wife is an assistant to the CEO of defense contractor Systems Control and oh yeah, he’s also having an affair with the (female) CEO. This is a cat-and-mouse espionage story — it's pitched as The Americans meets Halt & Catch Fire, which nicely captures what an adaptation would look like (best, I think, as a movie or a short, say four-episode, limited series.) Harper is a fascinating character. He’s brilliant but also an alcoholic and a lothario motivated by nothing more than greed. The mix of seduction and spying embedded in an FBI procedural hunt plot is a winning combination to me. One thing that sets Spy Valley apart is that creator/host Zach Dorfman, a national security reporter who’s written for The Atlantic and Foreign Policy, convinced the now 80-something Harper — he was released from jail in 2016 after serving more than 30 years — to talk to him. REPS: UTA or Bradley Hope at Project Brazen
JOURNALISM
Survivalist Drama
For fans of Into the Wild
Potential logline: Rebecca Vance, 42, her 14-year-old son and her sister decided to live off the grid in a remote Colorado campground. They didn’t survive the winter. What happened?
"Colorado Springs-based campers found dead in Gunnison County were trying to live 'off the grid'" by O'Dell Isaac (Colorado Springs Gazette, July 26) In the summer of 2022, Rebecca Vance, 42, her sister Christine, 41, and Rebecca's 14-year-old son decided to live "off the grid" by setting up a campsite in a remote part of Colorado near Gunnison — they wouldn't tell anyone exactly where. Their family tried to stop them, but Rebecca thought the world was going to hell and this was a way to "save" her son and sister. Hikers found their remains a couple of weeks ago. They didn't survive their first winter, dying of a combination of exposure and malnutrition. This is a fascinating and tragic story that echoes Into the Wild, updated for the 2020s — Rebecca seems to have been motivated by paranoia fed by far-right rhetoric painting a dystopian picture of an America on the verge of collapse. She dragged her younger sister and son into the scheme. It's still early and we don't have all the details but I'm sure we'll learn more. This local story is probably the best — always go with local reporters — but coverage has appeared in the NYT and the Washington Post. If you're interested in a drama that mixes the crazy politics of our day with a misguided survivalist narrative, hop on this story before anyone else does. REPS: The Gazette for this piece but of course, you'd also want to get rights/cooperation from family members name-checked in the articles.
That’s a wrap for today, folks. We’ll see you next week for our regular roundup of the best optionable material out there.