That kitchen-timer ding you may have heard from the direction of L.A. last month was the sound of the existing Bad Monkeys television option expiring. The film and TV rights have now reverted to me and are once again available. If you should find yourself at a dinner party with Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, Jane Espenson, Marti Noxon, and/or whoever was responsible for the Hannah McKay subplot on season 7 of Dexter, feel free to drop this into the conversation.
As always, if you’re interested in acquiring the rights yourself, the person to contact is my CAA agent, Matthew Snyder.
Also:
* I’m curious whether all the New York Times ads for Carl Hiaason’s latest novel will give my Monkeys a free publicity bump.
* If you’re a fan of Looper or Brick, you should check out writer/director Rian Johnson’s other film, The Brothers Bloom. (I’d put Johnson on my list of dream adapters for Bad Monkeys but he apparently only does original material, which I can’t argue with.)
* What Would Phoebe Do has an interesting series of posts about why certain subjects are better explored as fiction than in first-person essays. (Parts I, II, III, and IV.)
* Last Thursday’s link to this guinea pig armor auction was one of my most retweeted tweets ever. No surprise there.
FINALLY!!!
I liked Brick and Looper, but was disappointed by The Brothers Bloom. It felt like a weak Wes Anderson film.
Thanks!
I always thought you wrote your books in a way so they couldn’t be made into movies, although they’ve always had a sort of cinematic feel to them. Who would you want to be cast for Jane Charlotte? Phil? True?
I don’t really have a dream cast list at the moment. A lot depends on whether it’s film or TV and how the producers want to adapt the story. My guess is that a movie Jane would be younger and much more physically attractive than the book Jane.
In your mind, would a TV show adaption be about the adventures of Jane, like what we saw in the book, or more of a wide adaption of the organizations affairs? I’m sorry about all the questions, Bad Monkeys is just one of my favorite books, and I’m interested in how you would want it to be adapted.
I would definitely want to keep the conceit of Jane in a room recounting her adventures to a skeptical psychiatrist. I think the two strongest elements of the novel are (a) Jane herself, and (b) the guessing game of “is she lying, crazy, or could this actually be for real?”
The real challenge is figuring how to keep that going over multiple seasons. With some additional sidetrips, you could stretch the events of the novel over 12 or 24 episodes, but then you’ve obviously got to change the ending or the story’s over.
(In one of the earliest rounds of discussion about adapting the book, a producer suggested keeping the ending of the novel, and having the second season of the TV show be about Phil’s adventures inside The Troop. The idea really intrigued me but it’s probably too radical to actually work, since you’d basically be completely upending the nature of the show.)
I was worried my upcoming debut novel, BadAss Monkeys, might be subject to some copyright infringement. Guess not.
I may need you to provide a testimonial–“Maybe something like “Baddest Monkeys yet!”