Vents MagaZine Music and Entertainment Magazine
Related Articles
It’s every burgeoning writer’s dream: To write a novel that so captures the imagination of the world at large that a full-tilt boogie bidding war erupts among the gatekeepers of Hollywood for the adaptation rights to that freshman labor of love. Heck, even this writer joins countless – and brothers and sisters, do I ever mean it when I say “countless” – other would-be scribes in harboring the same fantasy about my mildew-laden horror script (“Worst F***ing Night Ever” in case at least one person is curious of my inspired – or is that insipid? – screenplay title) igniting the respective passions of the Griffin Mill’s of Hollyweird. All of that now being a matter of public record, it is indeed heartening to observe that at least one fellow scribe has achieved that lofty ambition with the all-out, take no prisoners bidding war that has spewed forth like Mount Vesuvius for the film rights to a novel that is being compared to the film Speed (albeit on a plane), Falling.
Per those rascally gents at The Hollywood Reporter comes the news that first-time author T.J. Newman’s first book entitled Falling has indeed inspired a passionate response in the form of multiple bidding wars to studio bean counters looking for their next big hit.
Falling is about a packed plane flight en route from the Big Apple to Los Angeles. Little do the intrepid travelers realize that, shortly before taking off, the family of the pilot was kidnapped; the pilot is tasked with an impossible choice: Either the pilot crashes the plane or his family will be killed. And you thought you were having a bad day…
The author of the book, 36 year old T.J. Newman, was until very recently a flight attendant and she reportedly wrote out in longhand a majority of her premiere novel on the back of cocktail napkins during her red-eye route, with some fine-tuning done on her trusty iPad, too. As noted above, her story is the sort of thing that all good success stories are made up of and, in the interest of that lovely notion Newman landed a seven figure book deal for Falling. Goodbye generic grocery store isle, hello brand name merchandise from now until the cows come home.
About the bidding war: Over fourteen big studios, streaming platforms, networks and top of the shelf filmmakers have been avidly pursuing the screen rights to Falling since an Associated Press wire story on the novel hit the airwaves on February 4. As of press time, at least two formal, legitimate offers from major studios are on the table for Newman to mull over. Wanna know the real kick in the head? Falling hasn’t even been released yet; a June drop date for the debut novel has been announced. Shocked? There is actually plenty of precedent with this story in the form of none other than director Steven Spielberg who famously read the galleys of a book that had yet to see a release and immediately optioned it for a film. The name of the book was Jaws and, much like T.J. Newman in 2021, it made author-in waiting Peter Benchley very happy indeed. Will lightning strike twice? Only time and the ever-shifting global box office will tell.
