IP Picks🔎: Wealthy Maine Neighbors Go to War
âž• A '70s detective thriller and a pair of Southern Gothic tales
Welcome to The Optionist. As always, thanks for reading along.
First, a quick shout-out: If you haven’t read Ankler London correspondent Manori Ravindran's deep dive into the new Netflix show Geek Girl's odyssey from book to screen, you need to. Its journey encapsulates many of the changes in the TV biz over the last decade — how it started as a movie but ended up as a series, how content has become increasingly global and the growing power of Netflix.
There's a lot of fascinating granular detail about how EP Jeff Norton managed to revive interest in the property after the movie option lapsed, how the story fell through the gaps as not quite kids’ programming but not quite adult programming, how Norton tried to position that perceived problem as a strength — and how he recognized that including the author was central to making the adaptation work. Every page-to-screen journey is unique, but learning how others navigate the challenges can be eye-opening and educational.
Speaking of page-to-screen journeys, I've been really curious how Jeff Nichols transformed Danny Lyon's 1968 book of photographs, The Bikeriders, into a new movie starring Tom Hardy, Austin Butler and Jodie Comer. It's not an obvious piece of IP, and capturing Lyon's powerful aesthetic in moving images is easier said than done. The NYT review of the film does a good job of sketching out the process.
For the most part, press coverage of Bikeriders has neglected Lyon's story. (Full disclosure: I met Danny through our mutual friend Julian Bond.) So I was glad to see this LAT profile of him. He's truly one of the great photographers of the last 60 years, especially his work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Civil Rights Movement. Fresh out of college in 1963, Lyon essentially became SNCC's house photographer. And his images were crucial in helping to sell the Movement to White America. In fact, a series of posters made from his photographs could once be found in dorm rooms across the country.
In the LAT article, Nichols speculates about a biopic on Lyon’s life. I happen to think this is a great idea. Personally, I'd focus on his civil rights years, telling the story of how a white kid from Brooklyn with a camera captured the activism and drama of those years. That would make an awesome movie.
Onto this week’s picks:
A black comedy about warring neighbors in Maine and how one couple caused an environmental disaster just to improve their view
A dramatic thriller that uses a time-travel hook to explore the history of Black Americans and generational trauma
A period gothic-horror novel about racism
A magical realism rom-com about a woman who risks losing her supernatural powers for love
A PI procedural with ‘70s detective show vibes
