Universal Pictures will build on their Bourne adventures franchise with an overall deal with the Robert Ludlum estate, acquiring exclusive rights to the Bourne character and a first look at all other Ludlum deals not under option elsewhere. Over 25 Ludlum novels have not been developed into movies, and the estate retains contractual approval over screenplays and actors. Henry Morrison and ICM represented the estate in the deal. The Matarese Circle is already controlled by MGM and Relativity, Paramount bought The Chancellor Manuscript, and Summit Entertainment has The Osterman Weekend, while Universal is developing The Sigma Protocol under a separate […]
Deals
Mailer Estate: The Client Wylie Lost
As an Observer article reports, Andrew Wylie at The Wylie Agency represented Norman Mailer while we he was alive but the estate has selected Mailer’s friend and longtime collaborator Larry Schiller to represent all unpublished material, including the trove of “something like 60,000” letters. J. Michael Lennon, who just signed with S&S for an authorized Mailer biography, has been working on one book compilation of Mailer letters “on and off for about five years.” The Observer suggests that publishing rights to that collection might have been ambiguous under Mailer’s contractual relationship with Mailer: “Though at one point last winter there […]
Countdown to Palin Proposal
“No matter what it is, the betting is she’ll sign a deal by the end of the month,” a publishing source tells Page Six. The big talent and literary agencies are all courting, and publishers are ready to bid. Random House’s Stuart Applebaum says, “There are several of our imprints who are eager to talk to Governor Palin. She clearly has a constituency and we know books by conservatively-centered politicos usually sell very, very well.”
Can Senator Use Campaign Funds to Commission Book?
That’s the basic question Republican Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond put to the Federal Election Commission recently, as his campaign treasurer wrote, “because the issues present in the book are so important and because we believe the book would be an effective gift to potential donors, we wish to utilize either campaign or leadership PAC funds to compensate Senator Bond’s co-author.” The book, The Next Front: What Can America Do to Win over Asia’s Muslims, was originally signed by Simon & Schuster. Bond now has another publisher and apparently needs to repay his original $60,000 advance and compensate his co-author.The Hill
Koontz Memoir Coming
As often happens, one of the bigger deal announcements comes not from the book fair but from the US. USA Today got the first look at the official press release (a glimpse had leaked through our foreign deal reports last month) that Dean Koontz will write a memoir, A BIT LITTLE LIFE: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog, publishing next summer from Hyperion. It’s the first in a two-book nonfiction deal for world English rights at Hyperion with editor Brenda Copeland. Koontz says: “I wanted to write not just another dog story like Marley & Me — and, by the […]
Coretta Scott King Book in Family Feud
Penguin has notified King Inc., which controls the intellectual property of Martin Luther King’s estate, “of its intent to terminate the contract and demand repayment of a $300,000 advance if it doesn’t receive promised photos, personal writings and intimate letters within seven business days,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. The contract, signed in May, provided for a $1.2 million advance to King Inc. and another $200,000 for journalist-turned-minister Rev. Barbara Reynolds for an autobiography based on taped conversations with the late Coretta Scott King. The dispute is part of a much larger set of disagreements among the King heirs. Dexter King, […]