A24 Wins But One other Wild Bidding Struggle (Unique)

A24 has received one more main bidding conflict.

This time, the indie studio outbid stiff competitors for the rights to show true crime podcast, The Girlfriends, from iHeartPodcasts and Novel, right into a tv sequence. The weekly podcast, which launched in the summertime, tells the true story of a bunch of ladies who band collectively to place a murderous ex behind bars. And although particulars of the TV model are being saved underneath wraps, Michael Showalter and his Semi-Formal Productions are already hooked up.

Showalter, who’s on a sizzling streak with a string of current successes throughout TV (The Dropout) and movie (The Eyes of Tammy Faye), is ready to direct, with Semi-Formal companion Jordana Mollick govt producing. She’ll be joined by fellow EPs Conal Byrne, Will Pearson and Carrie Lieberman of iHeartPodcasts and Julia Bromberg and Neil Krishnan of Novel.

The information comes because the broader IP market has solely grown frothier amid the historic twin Hollywood strikes, which floor manufacturing to a halt and left the trade with little else to promote. In that point, private-equity backed A24 is claimed to be among the many most aggressive patrons, recurrently successful bidding wars for materials, together with one other current aggressive victory with Paris Hilton’s memoir, which it’ll produce for TV alongside Hilton’s leisure firm 11:11 Media, Dakota and Elle Fanning’s Lewellen Photos, and David Bernad’s Center Baby Photos.

Assuming Girlfriends finally makes it to air, it might be a part of an already prolific A24 slate, which options HBO’s Euphoria, Netflix’s Beef and upcoming sequence The Sympathizer, starring Robert Downey Jr. for HBO, and The Curse, fronted by Emma Stone, Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie, at Showtime. On the movie aspect, A24 was behind this 12 months’s Oscar winner All the pieces All over the place All at As soon as.

For its half, Semi-Formal Productions was based in 2018 with a mission to inform heartfelt tales which are directly edgy, modern and socially conscious. Semi-Formal entries have included the Showalter-helmed Spoiler Alert, based mostly on journalist Michael Ausiello’s memoir, and the Will Ferrell/Paul Rudd Apple TV+ sequence The Shrink Subsequent Door, tailored from one other in style podcast. Up subsequent is the Anne Hathaway-led movie, The Thought of You, which Showalter directed and produced for Amazon, based mostly on the best-selling novel of the identical identify.

As a press launch characterised Girlfriends upon its launch in the summertime, the podcast diverges from most true crime choices in that it’s not truly concerning the assassin, Bob Bierenbaum. As an alternative, it’s about his spouse, Gail, and a sisterhood of ladies who dated him and will have suffered the identical destiny she did. (Bierenbaum was finally arrested in 1999 and located responsible and sentenced to a life in jail the next 12 months; he lastly confessed to murdering Gail in 2020.) The podcast is hosted by Carole Fisher, one of many aforementioned girlfriends, and is produced in partnership with No Extra, a worldwide nonprofit devoted to ending home and sexual violence.

UTA brokered the rights deal. WME was additionally concerned. Showalter is repped by UTA, Artists First and Goodman, Genow, Schenkman.