IP Picks🔎: C’mon People, Option E. Jean Carroll’s New Book!
‘Nobody in Hollywood has the balls’ the author tells me. Plus: a real-life IRA-in-the-USA thriller, a ‘Perfect Couple’-style family mystery in Lake Tahoe & more
Welcome to The Optionist. Thanks for reading along! We have a super-interesting list this week, including a new book from E. Jean Carroll, who, when I reached out to her, told me it is a memoir that “nobody in Hollywood has the balls to option.” Only time will tell on that score, but someone should! This buzzy, hot-button memoir is actually quite funny (seriously) and would make a terrific movie (Jane Fonda and Jay Roach, this is all yours). It’s such an intriguing possibility, I’ve put this pick above the paywall so everyone can make up their own mind. Read more below. (Also, if you’re not a full subscriber, this is what you’ll find in The Optionist week in and week out.)
Before we get to this week’s selections, I wanted to share the newly published list of the 10 best-selling books of the year to date (according to Circana BookScan, via Publishers Weekly):
The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins: 1,761,538 copies sold
Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins: 1,688,809
Onyx Storm (deluxe edition) by Rebecca Yarros: 1,580,962
Big Jim Begins (Dog Man #13) by Dav Pilkey: 500,868
The Housemaid by Freida McFadden: 490,046
Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros: 449,346
Atomic Habits by James Clear: 439,849
Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss: 436,000
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros: 433,116
The Crash by Freida McFadden: 417,570
A few things jump out: First, how do I get a cut of the backend on Oh, the Places You’ll Go!? That 1990 graduation-gift staple was the last title published by the good doctor before he died in 1991. And its sales have just kept steadily climbing over the past decade. I can’t find an updated figure for its total sales, but I know it’s around 18 million, give or take. That number should soar even higher now that there’s a movie adaptation in the works (a musical, no less!), with Jon M. Chu directing and J.J. Abrams producing. It’s currently slated for 2028.
I’ll confess that the Sunrise on the Reaping numbers surprised me. Turns out there’s a lot more life in the 17-year-old Hunger Games franchise than I expected. The monster tally bodes well for the upcoming film adaptation and its all-star cast (Ralph Fiennes, Elle Fanning, Kieran Culkin, Jesse Plemons, Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Maya Hawke). It will be released in November 2026.
Keep a close eye on Freida McFadden — the white-hot author started self-publishing before eventually crossing over to a traditional house. She’s been a big seller for a few years now, but she hasn’t had an adaptation make it to the screen... yet. That will change when The Housemaid (starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried and directed by Paul Feig) hits theaters on Christmas Day. Don’t be surprised if McFadden’s other books follow close behind.
Last but not least: It’s good to be Rebecca Yarros. With two books in the top 10 and a third just outside at No. 11 (Iron Flame — 393,786 copies sold), all three titles in her Empyrean series are officially blockbusters. The Amazon adaptation recently changed showrunners, and there has already been some trolling about the series’ suitability for the screen, but I wouldn’t bet against this one. This fan base is passionate… and growing. I think it’ll score big. So big that there might even be room for more than one romantasy adaptation out there. Stay tuned.
🔒 This Week: A Ballsy Pick
On to this week’s picks! We’ve got a headline-making memoir to start, plus a great true-crime procedural with a geopolitical hook and the latest from a bestselling fantasy author. The full line-up:
📚 A buzzy, provocative courtroom drama that involves a sitting president, sexual assault charges and a fearless and extremely funny woman speaking truth to power.
🇮🇪 A true-crime thriller that’s an American Say Nothing about the IRA in the USA.
🪄 A high-concept grounded fantasy/thriller from a bestselling YA writer that mixes magic and the mafia and is already generating serious attention.
❤️ 🔺 A Normal People-meets-Past Lives-meets-The Perfect Couple romantic drama about a college love triangle and its messy, decades-long aftermath that packs an emotional wallop.
🍷 A multi-generational family drama (with a dash of soap) about a woman who returns to her hometown after two decades to solve the disappearance of her childhood sweetheart.
BOOKS I LIKE (current)
True Crime/Politics/Courtroom Procedural
For fans of: Bombshell and Game Change
Potential logline: A witty and barbed chronicle of how E. Jean Carroll triumphed over Donald Trump (twice!) in court.
Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President by E. Jean Carroll (St. Martin’s Press, June) Most people are familiar with the broad strokes of E. Jean Carroll’s long legal battle against Donald Trump. It all began with the veteran journalist’s accusation that the current president sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in 1996 (which Trump denied). It concluded with her beating him twice in court. The decision in Carroll’s civil suit found Trump liable for defamation after he said her story was a lie, to the tune of $100 million (including interest). For the record, Trump hasn’t paid up since he’s still contesting the verdict (additional interest is tacked on every day).
Carroll tells the story from her POV here, skewering the commander-in-chief and his clown-car legal team with a sharply observed (and often funny) account that one early review called “breezily barbed,” which perfectly captures the author’s tone. But Carroll is also a journalist (and a damn fine one), so her job with this book “is, and was, to write the facts. So that’s what I did.” As she also points out in the book, it doesn’t hurt that the trial transcripts read like a Shakespearean play.
The entire account is stunning. I don’t know if anyone could have ever imagined that a story about sexual assault and defamation could be this funny. Carroll saves some of her most cutting sentences for one of the members of Trump’s defense team — the tone-deaf and seemingly incompetent Alina Habba — and its failed strategy to portray the author as both a harlot and someone too unattractive for Trump to consider having sex with. No, that isn’t a joke!
The book’s title, of course, is a quote from Trump himself. And the fact that Carroll chose it as her title captures her cheeky sense of humor. But beyond that, this is a poignant tale of a woman who, in her own words, “was boy crazy her whole life [but] just shut it down after the assault,” which gives the memoir additional depth and emotional resonance.
I can think of a long list of actresses who would be great in the lead role, from Jane Fonda to Lily Tomlin to Meryl Streep. I have no clue whether Sebastian Stan would be interested in taking another turn as Trump, but he’s set the standard. It wasn’t that long ago when Jay Roach would have been tapped to turn this into a must-watch for HBO (but that was before David Zaslav was palling around with Ivanka Trump).
To be honest, I hadn’t thought about bringing Carroll’s story to the screen before this book’s release. But after reading the positive reviews, I inquired whether anyone had optioned the book or Carroll’s life rights. I was convinced this would be a dead-end search. But not only were the rights available, Carroll herself told me that she thought Trump had “frightened the media and entertainment industries out of their wits.” She then added, “Nobody in Hollywood has the balls to option Not My Type.”
She might be right, which is a shame. This would make a wickedly funny politics-meets-courtroom procedural in the same vein as Recount and Game Change. Those movies came out during a brief boomlet of semi-satirical, ripped-from-the-headlines political films in the aughts and early teens. But the partisan divisions in the country have become so heated since then, and the risk of frivolous litigation from the president himself certainly has chilled potential buyers. There doesn’t seem to be the same market for those kinds of movies right now. Emphasis on “right now.” This moment will pass. Perhaps quicker than many people think. When it does, I think audiences will be interested in a screen version of Carroll’s story. REPS: Mel Berger/WME