After a tense weekend auction, Warner Bros. lands the screen rights for the upcoming T.J. Newman novel Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421. According to some sources, the studio paid $1.5 million against $3 million after five seven-figure bids.
Last Tuesday, Drowning was leaked in Hollywood and shopped around for screen adaptation rights. People like Steven Spielberg, Nicole Kidman, the Russo Brothers, and Jerry Bruckheimer were among those interested in buying the rights. Eventually, it came down to five bidders: Apple, Paramount, Legendary, Universal Television, and Warner Bros. The film is set to be produced by Shane Salerno, who discovered Newman when she was a flight attendant working on her debut novel Falling and the Shout Factory. T.J. Newman will be the project’s executive producer. There is no confirmed production start date or cast from Warner Bros.
Drowning follows an airplane crash in the Pacific Ocean, where a dozen passengers end up trapped in a sealed plane section as it lands on the edge of an underwater cliff. Among the passengers are an engineer and his eleven-year-old daughter, whose mother is a part of the rescue team that races to save the survivors before their air runs out. The book is set to be published on May 30 by Simon & Schuster.
This is the second aviation-related thriller by T.J. Newman, following up on her best-selling novel Falling. It sold for three seven-figure deals, which included a worldwide publishing deal with Simon & Schuster, foreign rights in more than 30 countries, and a $1.5 million movie deal with Universal and Working Title. Newman is working on the screenplay for the Falling film, marking it as her first work as a screenwriter.
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