IP Picks🔎: A WWII Drama with a GI Jane Twist
➕ A time-travel romance, how deepfakes unravel a family and my 2025 preview
Welcome to The Optionist. Happy New Year! I trust that everyone had a rejuvenating break. It has been a quiet couple of weeks in Hollywood. Quiet except for the wild lawsuit, countersuit and side suit (involving the publicists) everyone is talking about. We're still in the early stages of this sordid soap opera and lots more information is bound to come out, but does anyone see a movie in this yet?
I'm so raring to turn the page on 2024 that I've already started to pencil into my calendar some of the books and screen adaptations I'm most interested in for the new year. Here is what’s currently on my radar.
First up, books…
Jan. 21: Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros The next installment in the author’s hit Romantasy series, The Empyrean, will come with a massive wave of hype and press coverage. But I'm curious if that will translate into a halo effect for the earlier books (and Romantasy in general) that grows the audience and if that will tell us anything about how an adaptation will perform at the box office.
Feb. 4: Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito The screen rights to this got snapped up very early in a major deal that has Margaret Qualley and Thomasin McKenzie attached to star, so it will be interesting to see if the book sales match the buzz.
March 18: Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins I’m absolutely convinced that there's still a lot of mileage left in the Hunger Games franchise. This upcoming prequel is already in development as a movie, so clearly Tinseltown agrees.
March 25: Elphie by Gregory Maguire Some 30 years after the publication of Wicked, Maguire returns with the story of an even-younger Elphaba. The book arrives smack dab between the releases of Part 1 ($650M and counting at the box office) and Part 2 in multiplexes, which I’m sure is a total coincidence. Prequel to a prequel anyone?
June 13: Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid Ever since Daisy Jones & the Six, Jenkins Reid has been on a roll. Let's see if this ‘80s romance set against the backdrop of the Space Shuttle program keeps the streak alive. With the adaptation of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo expected to drop later this year on Netflix, we could be hearing a lot about her in 2025.
For movies and TV shows, here’s what I've got my eyes on:
Jan. 13: Dog Man As anyone with kids already knows, Dav Pilkey is a Big Deal with young readers and has been for a while. The dozen Dog Man books have sold more than 60 million copies (alongside the 50M+ for Captain Underpants), so it will be interesting to see how this adaptation performs in theaters.
Feb. 13: Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy I can't believe there's any juice left to squeeze out of this franchise, but maybe I'll be proven wrong. I suppose we should never underestimate the power of nostalgia.
July 11: Animal Farm Nothing says “Boffo Summer Box Office” like George Orwell! What's the audience appetite for an animated political allegory about totalitarianism and political corruption? No, seriously. I’m curious. I guess we’ll see.
Oct. 24: Regretting You Hard on the heels of Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us, this second big-screen adaptation of the author’s work stars Allison Williams and Mckenna Grace. The Lively-Baldoni imbroglio may very well boost the box office here.
TBD: The Thursday Murder Club If the adaptation of Richard Osman's hit series of books about a bunch of seniors solving murders out of their retirement home scores, it may prove that there's still life in shows for (and about) grown-ups.
TBD: We Were Liars This E. Lockhart novel was one of the best YA books of the 2010s. I loved it. Fingers crossed that the adaptation measures up.
On to this week’s picks, which include a forgotten chapter from WWII and a thriller that taps into our anxieties about AI. The full lineup:
A WWII-set drama in the vein of Netflix’s Six Triple Eight
A domestic mystery centered on the question of who killed a family matriarch
A timely techno-thriller that addresses hot-button issues like deepfakes and AI
A sci-fi thriller/romance involving time travel
