IP Picksđ: 'Frankenstein' in the Old West
â Two original takes on marriages gone bad
Welcome to The Optionist. When I was a kid, I had a cheesy poster on my bedroom wall that showed a long, undulating country road with a single runner on it. The tag read: âThe race isnât always won by the swift, but by those that keep running.â I know, right? But hey, I was 15. As a friend reminds me all the time, the reason cliches like these work is because they contain a real truth at their core. Letâs start with a trio of stories this week that remind me of that poster and its message of persistence.
â˘Bernie Gunther is finally coming to the screen. Philip Kerrâs internationally popular 14-book series about a hard-boiled Berlin detective set between the 1930s and the 1950s is being adapted by Playtone for Apple TV+. Some backstory: Itâs been more than a dozen years since Tom Hanks and his partner Gary Goetzman first acquired the rights. The project was originally in development at HBO and then set up at Sky. Now itâs Appleâs turn on the clock.
Interestingly, Playtoneâs plan is to start with Metropolis â the last book Kerr wrote, but the first for Gunther chronologically. Published in 2019, a year after Kerrâs death, Metropolis is set in 1928 and fleshes out the gumshoeâs origin story, catching him at the moment when he transitions from German police officer to homicide detective.
Iâm especially curious to see where the show will go after season one. After all, Kerrâs noir-ish novels jump around in time, with several unfolding across multiple periods. Gunther fans debate whether the books should be read in their published order or in the chronological order of the character. (The consensus among die-hards seems to be the former.)
One reason this story caught my attention is it highlighted a bunch of themes The Optionist has repeatedly championed: The resilience of procedurals (especially serialized ones); the possibilities of developing internationally popular fiction for global markets; how a period setting is an impediment only until it isnât; and the fact that contemporary literary estates have never been more valuable than they are right now.
â˘Iâd be lying if I said I wasnât excited about this one. Amazon shared first-look photos from We Were Liars, another long-gestating adaptation thatâs coming to the screen in June. The series is based on E. Lockhartâs bestselling 2014 novel about a wealthy family that summers on an island near Marthaâs Vineyard. The family suffered a terrible tragedy two summers earlier, which the central character Candace canât remember anything about. Itâs part family drama, part psychological thriller, part coming-of-age story. It also has some fantastic twists.
This one has also had a convoluted development history. It was going to be a movie and then it was going to be a Netflix series. Finally, the streaming giant let the rights lapse. Enter Julie Plec (The Vampire Diaries) and Carina Adly MacKenzie (Roswell, New Mexico), who both loved the book and snapped up the rights to it (as well as its prequel) in 2022. Sometimes a project just needs to find the right people at the right time to make it happen.
Itâs not hype to say that We Were Liars is one of the most beloved YA books of this century â I discovered it soon after publication when my tween nieces, who were big readers, raved about it â but Iâve consistently pushed all sorts of YA in The Optionist. Why? Because YA authors pen some of the most adaptable books out there. Plus, coming-of-age stories appeal to a surprisingly broad demo. Like horror, they also have a loyal audience that will show up over and over. If the adaptation is good, theyâll be great proselytizers for it, which is even more important in the age of BookTok, etc.
â˘One of my earliest Optionist picks was 2022âs Death and the Conjuror by Tom Mead. It was a super-fun, 1930s-set homage to the Golden Age of locked-room mysteries featuring the crime-solving magician Joseph Spector. I know period stories can be a tough sell (though see my caveat above), but the main character reminded me of what I loved about Carter Beats the Devil â Glen David Goldâs fabulous 2001 novel that has tragically never made it to the screen. Not only did I like the Holmes/Watson spin on Spectorâs partnership with Scotland Yard detective George Flint, there was also the success of the Knives Out movies and the big-screen Agatha Christie revivals to back me up.
It had been a while since I checked on the rights for this one. But when I saw that the fourth book in the series was coming out in July, I planned to mention it again. Then I learned the rights were optioned a few months ago by Aurelia Pictures in the U.K. for series development. (Like the majority of options, this one didnât get any publicity. I had to dig in to find the answer.)
Once again, the point here is that the race isnât always won by the swift. That and of course that The Optionist readers would have had this on their radars from day one, as well as a thoughtful take on why it would work on screen.
On to this weekâs picks, which are both eclectic and fun, including two backlist titles. Weâve got a full-on Frankenstein homage and a sci-fi thriller about reanimation. Plus, a pair of highly original stories about unraveling marriages â one a thriller, the other a dark comedy. The full lineup:
An Old West-set take on the horror classic, Frankenstein
A thriller about witches battling to determine the outcome of World War II
A domestic dark comedy from Australia about a mother who abandons her family after a bizarre accident changes her personality
A dystopian sci-fi thriller centered on a reanimated soldier thatâs Jack Reacher by way of Blake Crouch
A domestic thriller about a romance writer in a unique marriage and the hippie mom next door who threatens to undo their careful arrangement
