So You Want Your Book Made Into a Movie or TV Show.

Let’s start with the bad news: your chances aren’t great.

Let’s move to the good news: it IS possible.

Books are made into TV shows and movies so often that this New York magazine story lists over 115 adaptations that came out in 2024 alone.

They included Nightbitch starring Amy Adams, Here starring Tom Hanks, Disclaimer starring Cate Blanchett, The Perfect Couple starring Nicole Kidman and Lady in the Lake starring Natalie Portman. Then there was the Blake Lively movie It Ends with Us, which got more PR for the drama around it than the actual movie but was based on one of Colleen Hoover’s many tomes.

Oh and who remembers that Bridgerton was a book before it was a Shonda Rhimes show? Also, anyone else lose 90 minutes of their life they’ll never get back watching The Idea of You, which was originally a piece of Harry Styles fan fiction? (Just me? Ugh.)

Point is: books are made into movies and TV shows all the time.

They are also optioned about a million times more often than they are made.

So how does this work? The best way I can explain it is through the journey I’ve gone on with Party Girl, which has been optioned half a dozen times.

My Magic/Tragic Hollywood Story 

The first time it was optioned, right as the book came out in 2007, I was naive enough to think I had it made/it would just get made. I was represented by CAA and my agent fielded a bunch of offers. One of them was from Melanie Griffith, who was then married to Antonio Banderas. They had me over to their mansion and treated me like I was one of them. Antonio told me in his lovely accent that he was “jealous” of me, since I could create art and have full control over it, the way someone working on a movie never could.

A maid walked in and announced that Jeffrey Katzenberg was on the phone for Antonio. As he left to take the call, Melanie yelled after him, “Tell him about Party Girl!”

But then their offer came in and it was very low and I was broke so I met with a mother-daughter production team my agent told me would really pony up.

The mother and daughter took me to lunch at Michael’s, then the chicest publishing restaurant in Manhattan. Tina Brown was at one table, Anna Wintour at another. (I may be making that up. It’s how it seems in my memory.) The mother and daughter had a deal with Sony and they told me that if I went with them, I could pick any screenwriter I wanted.

As a staunch member of Gen-X, I knew there was only one answer: Helen Childress, the woman who wrote Reality Bites.

Mother and daughter said they’d make it happen. I cashed their $20k option money and believed them when they told me they’d circle back.

Months passed. I called them. (This was pre texting days, when I actually called people.) They never returned the message. I emailed them. No response. This could seem odd only to someone unfamiliar with the ways of Hollywood, the town that invented professional ghosting.

Some time later I received an email from CAA: Congratulations, it read. Your book rights have reverted back to you!

I responded, “What does this mean?”

I received no response and then slowly wised up to the fact that this meant It Was Over. The mother-daughter production team never got back to me. I had no idea if they’d ever gotten my beloved Reality Bites screenwriter involved.1 

Second Time’s a Charm?

My fourth book, Falling for Me, also attracted interest. By then, I was at WME (then still just William Morris) and my agent told me the producers of Community wanted to make it into a TV show. By this time, option money had dried up. In other words, no one else wanted the rights so they didn’t have to pay me.

I met with one of the producers and a female writer he wanted to create the show. I sat in on a bunch of meetings where the writer explained her concept, which was the same as the book but different. I didn’t understand what she was bringing aside from changing someone’s gender or job. The producer explained when I asked that she was a big name and TV networks wanted to work with her. (I have no memory of her [big] name, not to mention the name of the Community producer or the name of the mother-daughter team. Repression or early-on set senility? You tell me.)

I had one request for the Falling For Me crew: don’t make me go to the pitch meetings. I had been depressed when Party Girl didn’t happen and I explained that I took rejection hard; also, since I wasn’t involved with the show beyond providing the source material, I probably didn’t need to be there and they could just call me with good news if there was good news?

They agreed but then, when they set up the pitches, they decided it would help to have me there: authenticity and all. So I went with them to meetings at ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox where the Writer with the Big Name pitched the story of my book but with characters with different genders and jobs. A few hours after each pitch meeting, the Community producer called and told me it was a pass.

While that was the end of Falling for Me’s Hollywood story, the Party Girl one continues and I have this bizarre faith that it will happen. At one point, Aaron Kaplan—then Darren Star’s producing partner—had the rights. During the pandemic I actually wrote the script and it’s actually good. (Not false modesty; I’ve tried writing scripts before and they weren’t good; this one is.) Last year, an actress who could have gotten in made wanted to star in it and the producers who had given her the script had the money to make it. We could have gone into production. But I didn’t think she was right so I passed.

Did I make a mistake? Maybe. I think the producers are now ghosting me.

I still think the movie will happen. Delusion or early onset senility? You tell me.

OMG Enough About Me

If you skipped ahead because you were like, “OMG I just want to know about my own book being made into a movie,” hi.

I actually happened to have interviewed two of the world’s leading experts on this topic: Warner Bros president Mike DeLuca (who’s been nominated for multiple Oscars for movies he’s made based on books) and Ben Mezrich (who’s had zillions2 of his own books made into movies). Because I know I’ve already gone on too long, I just asked my best friend Claude to summarize their points. Here they are:

Based on these fascinating interviews with Mike DeLuca and Ben Mezrich, here are the key insights for authors hoping to see their books adapted for the screen:

Reality Check:

- The vast majority of optioned books never become movies

- Options are often low-paying or free unless it's a major bestseller

- Without A-list talent attached (writer, director, actor), projects rarely move forward

- Movies can take many years to get made, even with strong backing

Paths to Hollywood:

- Some producers and executives specifically scout self-published/indie books

- Book scouts at studios are constantly looking for material

- Having a high-profile agent can help get your book in front of the right people

- Creating buzz through sales and press coverage can attract Hollywood attention

From both interviews, the key takeaway seems to be that success requires a combination of great material, strategic timing, right relationships, and often a good amount of luck. As Mike DeLuca says, writing something commercial with a clear target audience in mind can help, but ultimately the story needs to grab attention and have strong potential for visual storytelling.

So Will Your Book Get Made?

I’m not sure. I do know that it’s easy to watch a movie or TV show, particularly a bad one, and think that your book would be better than whatever you’re watching. It probably would be.

But there are so many factors at play. It’s really not about how great your story is. It’s about attaching movie stars who can get it made and/or knowing people who can finance it. Because my boyfriend is an indie movie producer, I’ve had a front-row seat seeing how it tends to work: there are a few people whose names mean so much overseas that if they’re in your movie, even briefly, you can get investors who know they’ll earn their money back. Think Anthony Hopkins, Nicolas Cage. You can pay them a sh*tload for a day’s work.

And look, any author can get an account to IMDBPro, which lists every actor’s rep. If there’s an actor that you think is both get-able and would be interested, reach out. If you have a connection to someone who can finance the movie (it’s a great business write off for someone with millions to spare), that means you can pay up front for that actor. Your chances just improved EXPONENTIALLY.

You just have to be realistic. Netflix probably isn’t going to make your book into a movie just because it’s a great idea.

But it can happen. I’ve seen it happen over and over and over again.

Though I still don’t know if Antonio told Jeffrey about Party Girl. I’m thinking not?