The 'Grey's Anatomy' Fabulist is the Next Great Grifter Story Hit
➕ a novel with another cancer con artist; a serial killer and three other picks
Welcome to The Optionist! As always, thanks for reading. We’re getting close to the end of year when Hollywood starts to shut down, but the flood of great IP doesn’t. We’ve got so many worthwhile picks this week.
But first: I sat down to interview Walden Media CEO Frank Smith for a Q&A coming next week, he mentioned that they are actively moving along with an adaptation of Nelson DeMille’s late ‘80s spy thriller The Charm School. I know it well. It was a book I read when I backpacked across Europe one summer. I picked it up as a beat-up paperback in some hostel’s give-one-take-one library. I could still rattle off the key plot details — it’s that good. Anyway, it reminded me (once again) of the power of the backlist in today’s competitive IP market. I’m not sure there’s another time in Hollywood’s history that a great almost 35-year-old book like this would get a chance at the screen so many years later. I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with it
Top of the week is this great story from our sister publication, The Ankler. Remember Elisabeth Finch, the Grey’s Anatomy writer who was exposed as a serial liar? Well, she sat down with The Ankler’s Peter Kiefer (who broke the original story) to come clean (or mostly clean) about her lies. It’s a doozy, and certainly has the internet ablaze. Even if you don’t have an interest in optioning it, you definitely should read the story — it’s one jaw-dropper after another with a rich backstory about the mores and inner workings of Hollywood at the top. We’ve also got:
A novel about another female con artist faking cancer to insinuate herself into the lives of a grieving widow and a lonely divorcee.
An exposé of the dark, dangerous underbelly of body building.
A police thriller about a Black sheriff in the South hunting a serial killer.
A #MeToo thriller about a group of women vigilantes meting out their own brand of justice.
Plus, more on Sam Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund girlfriend Caroline Ellison.
JOURNALISM
Con/Showbiz Drama
For fans of Inventing Anna
Potential logline: A TV writer’s career on a soapy medical hit skyrockets after she mines her own cancer and other life tragedies for plot lines — until her wife and a reporter expose all her stories as lies.
The 'Grey's Anatomy' Liar Confesses it All by Peter Kiefer (The Ankler, Dec. 7) This. Is. Amazing. I never really thought I'd find a great Optionist pick in my own backyard, but this Ankler piece about Grey's Anatomy serial fabulist Elisabeth Finch is absolutely fabulous and would make an amazing limited series. If you're not familiar with the story yet, Finch rose to become a star writer/producer on Grey's Anatomy by mining her own horrific medical history — a rare cancer, a lost kidney, a chemotherapy-related abortion, surgery to remove part of her tibia — for storylines (and clout on the job) on the hit ABC show from Shonda Rhimes’ Shondaland. There were also other dramatic tales — missing work to collect remains of a friend killed in Pittsburgh's Tree of Life massacre; a brother dead from suicide after clinging on to life support. Finch was a darling of showrunner Krista Vernoff, trotted out to tell her story in interviews and columns. And she wielded her status in ways often nasty and abusive to those less powerful around the Grey's set. But, as it turned out, none of her stories were true. In March, Kiefer broke the news that Finch had been put on leave by Disney (it turns out her wife, a registered nurse, had turned her in). Immediately her world came to an end. Seven months later, she sat down with Kiefer to finally come clean. Sure people are saying the con/grifter trend might be tapering off but if there's one story that could bring viewers back to their screens, it is this one, which features Hollywood, lies and a bad romance (not to mention Finch’s own stories of trauma and abuse that she says are the source of her lies). There's so much here it should absolutely be done as a limited series and whoever does it should definitely include the four Kiefer-Finch interviews as a key element. Think Frost/Nixon for the TikTok set. One thing I like about how Kiefer tells the story is how he stresses that there are no reliable narrators in this story, and the role Hollywood’s thirst for “lived experience” among its writers and filmmakers may have played in creating a perfect climate for Finch to thrive. Bonus: Shonda Rhimes was making Inventing Anna right as Finch was creating her own con right under her nose (great B plot). This will be a hit. The rights to this should be gone very, very fast. REPS: Contact me and I’ll hook you up.
