A24, David E. Kelley to Adapt Red-Hot Book Where OnlyFans Meets Wrestling (Exclusive)
A24 is at it again.
The studio has outbid fierce competition for the rights to adapt Rufi Thorpe’s upcoming book Margo’s Got Money Troubles, with David E. Kelley in talks to co-write the TV adaptation. Nicole Kidman as well as Elle and Dakota Fanning’s production companies are also attached to executive produce the potential series, which landed at A24 following a bidding war that featured nearly a dozen companies that were competing for the rights to the book about controlling your own narrative.
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Scheduled for publication in June via HarperCollins imprint William Morrow, Margo’s Got Money Troubles revolves around Margo Millet, the daughter of a Hooters waitress and former pro wrestler who, after having an affair with her junior college English professor, gets pregnant and turns to OnlyFans to make ends meet. After reuniting with her estranged father, who imparts advice he learned in the wrestling ring, Margo becomes a runaway success on OnlyFans.
David E. Kelley Productions’ Matthew Tinker; Lewellen Pictures’ Elle Fanning, Dakota Fanning and Brittany Kahan Ward; and Blossom Films’ Kidman and Per Saari will exec produce alongside author Thorpe for A24.
The news comes as the broader IP market has only grown frothier amid the historic dual Hollywood strikes, which ground production to a halt and left the industry with little else to sell. In that time, private-equity-backed A24 is said to be among the most aggressive buyers, regularly winning bidding wars for material, including another recent competitive victory with Paris Hilton’s memoir, which it will produce for TV alongside Hilton’s entertainment company 11:11 Media and the Fannings’ Lewellen Pictures. A24 also won a bidding war for the true-crime podcast The Girlfriends, with director Michael Showalter and his Semi-Formal Productions attached.
Should Margo’s Got Money Troubles and The Girlfriends make it to air, they would join an already prolific A24 slate that features HBO’s Euphoria, Netflix’s Beef and upcoming series The Sympathizer, starring Robert Downey Jr. for HBO, and The Curse, fronted by Emma Stone, Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie, at Showtime. On the film side, A24 was behind this year’s Oscar winner, Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Kidman and Kelley have previously teamed on such TV series as Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers, Max’s Love and Death, HBO’s Big Little Lies and The Undoing. Lewellen Pictures’ credits include producing Hulu’s The Great, which starred Elle Fanning, as well as The Girl From Plainville.
Thorpe is repped by CAA and Trellis Literary Management.
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