IP Picks 🔎: The Book Mel Brooks Thinks Would Make a Great Movie
➕ a crazy con/Jeffrey Epstein story
Welcome to The Optionist! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. It’s amazing how fast time goes between now and the end of the year. But there are still tons of great books and articles available to be optioned. (Indeed, now’s the time to strike when others are distracted!)
If you didn't catch this great Ankler piece by my colleague Nicole LaPorte about the squeeze on producers, it is definitely worth a read. Squeeze is the right word here as she quotes working producers about getting pushed at both ends with less money, fewer overhead deals and more pressure to make up for the loss of back-end with volume (thus less time to devote to each project). There's lots of interesting stuff about IP in Nicole’s story as well. With all these pressures, buyers are looking for turn-key projects with some sort of proven IP. They want something that can move quickly through development (no one has time anymore to nurture stuff) and some proven evidence of audience interest. That's a lot of pressure.
While The Optionist can't solve all these problems, we can help. My weekly picks (and regular interviews and news) cut through clutter to identify the most promising IP. It's like having an extra set of eyes and ears to identify projects for development during this time of belt tightening and budget cutting. We can help you do more for a fraction of the cost of hiring extra staff.
Take this week’s picks. We’ve got a book that Mel Brooks thinks would make a great movie — it’s a biopic about a famous (if somewhat overlooked) star from the last century. We’ve also got:
The twisty tale of an ex-CIA agent and an alleged sex trafficker billionaire
A cute rom-com about a woman trying to complete her high-school bucket list
A murder mystery set in the still-segregated South of the 1970s
A true crime story about the murder of a retired couple
