IP Picks🔎: ‘John Wick’ Meets ‘Conclave’ in a New Franchise Starter
➕ A backlist gem & a cozy second-chance love story. Also: An AI scandal that feels major
Welcome to The Optionist. Thanks for reading along with me.
Let’s go around the horn with a bunch of stuff I think should be on your radar, starting with some big, late-breaking news.
I’m flagging this story about a huge book deal — a $2.4M reported advance from Macmillan imprint Minotaur Books that was on the verge of an equally big movie pact — which has fallen apart over accusations the first-time author used AI in the writing.
It’s a juicy scandal, but it also raises big questions about AI that go beyond the easy-to-recognize slop sold by self-published “authors” on Amazon.
The book is reportedly titled Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body, and it’s said to be a riff on Harvey Keitel’s character, Winston Wolf, in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. It centers on a cleaner — a guy who makes bodies disappear — who moves from Lagos to Houston and then gets involved with a drug cartel. But apparently, it is no longer being offered to foreign publishers, and the U.S. deal is off after an editor who read the manuscript raised suspicions about AI use.
There are conflicting stories about the book. Europa Content, the agency repping the book, said in a statement they were “dazzled” by an “incredible manuscript” and that they trusted the author’s assurances that it was written without AI. In a follow-up, agent Mark Gerald told Publishers Lunch “we can no longer substantiate” those claims.
The site reports that an analysis by “leading AI vetting” software Pangram found a 97 percent probability of AI use. Still, there’s a lot of controversy around this type of analysis, with many claiming high rates of false positives.
The author — whose name is being kept out of the stories — is denying any use of AI, telling Bookseller that “the story, characters, scenes, humor, structure and voice came from me” and that they have “time-stamped drafts, written notes and dated WhatsApp messages” to document it. They’re framing it as a huge miscarriage of justice, guilty until proven innocent, that has cost this debut author “U.S., U.K., translation and screen opportunities without being given a proper chance to explain my writing process.”
(Quick aside: Jeff Sneider reported the story first in his newsletter, and then Deadline’s Mike Fleming added a few more details and claimed an “exclusive” — not cool, not cool at all; Fleming alone also chose to out the author, but then updated his story with this: “The novel by [for a complicated set of reasons I have removed the author’s name].” My guess is that the complication was that explaining the reasons would embarrass Fleming, so he dodged.)
Right now, I don’t have any report to add beyond what’s out there. But it’s a story worth watching. It raises uncomfortable questions about AI in publishing. Is the vetting process broken? Look at how far along the book — a high-profile manuscript — got before AI became a concern. The agents admit they took the author’s assurances at his word and didn’t run the manuscript through an AI-detection program — and it appears that perhaps only one of the 14 publishers bidding on the book raised concerns about AI use. And even if manuscripts are run through those programs, can the results be trusted? Look at the damage done to this author if this did turn out to be a false positive.
But in a larger sense, it raises really hard-to-answer questions about the idea of authorship and quality. What does it say that these experienced agents were “dazzled” by the manuscript and that more than a dozen publishers were tripping over themselves to get the book — all while Hollywood was rushing to scoop up the screen rights way ahead of publication? Has AI gotten this “good” already, or are the standards that low? If an alleged AI-assisted project can generate this much heat, does human authorship matter anymore? And is what Hollywood is looking for in crime thrillers so formulaic that it’s easy for AI to mimic it?
This bums me out. A couple of weeks ago I flagged that Children of Blood and Bone author Tomi Adeyemi had distanced herself from the film — which she co-wrote with director Gina Prince-Blythewood — with a series of pretty cryptic notes and texts.
This week, the January release’s first trailer dropped, featuring an all-star cast led by Viola Davis and Idris Elba. It looks awesome; in my opinion, I could see this movie really doing well. But then a few days later Adeyemi posted a video calling her experience on the project “the worst thing I have ever had to live through.” Whoa. You really need to watch the whole video — not so much for the details that are revealed but to get a sense of her clear anguish.
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It’s still not clear exactly what happened, but it is a shame. The movie looks great, the book has a devoted fan base and I normally would be cheering for this to succeed. Now I don’t know what to think.
Justice delayed, but not denied: Remember the couple I mentioned earlier this month that was harassed by eBay? The one that was an early Optionist pick and then a recent Prime Video doc? Well, the case has finally been settled in the couple’s favor in a big way. After years of denying corporate responsibility and stonewalling, eBay has agreed to pay the couple $46.15M plus $6M in donations to various charitable nonprofits. The execs will pay an additional $2.55M and $1M in charitable donations. The doc was great, but I still think there could be something scripted here (but I haven’t checked on the status of those rights vis-à-vis the doc).
Pop’s Coolest Book Nerd: Dua Lipa is a legit book lover. She takes her book club seriously, and let’s not forget she and new husband, Callum Turner, connected over both reading Hernán Díaz’s Trust. (Wonder now if he got an invite to the wedding? I hope so.) Now, she’ll be interviewing Zadie Smith in October at the London Literature Festival.
This week: A spy story in the news, a pair of grifters and a potential action franchise with a wild premise
I’ve got a great WWII spy story this week that popped up on my radar because of a news story tangentially about it. Plus, I’ve got that potential action franchise which I loved, a cozy second-chance romance and a pair of true-crime stories. What a week!
🔒The full lineup for paid subscribers:
⛪ Conclave meets John Wick in what could be a new feature franchise.
🪄A Ghosts meets It’s Not Like That potential series that’s a cozy second-chance romance with a touch of the supernatural.
🕵🏼♂️🪖 Backlist Gem Alert: A true WWII spy story that’s just been in the news and is great for the small screen.
📞 In long-form journalism this week, two great true-crime grift tales: A Canadian-set phone scammer story in the vein of The Wolf of Wall Street and a true crime producer turns to grifting in a story with shades of Inventing Anna and The Dropout.
