Warner Bros. Pays Big Money for Plane Survival Thriller DROWNING: THE RESCUE OF FLIGHT 1421
Over the weekend Warner Bros. landed the rights to the upcoming novel Drowning: The Rescue Of Flight 1421, and they paid some big money for it after “one of the wildest book rights auctions” Hollywood has seen in a while.
The story is a plane survival thriller, and it was written by T.J. Newman, whose book Falling was sold to Universal Pictures last week. Newman has certainly had an exciting couple of weeks! WB paid $1.5 million against $3 million, and there were five other seven-figure bids on the table from other studios. The book is described as “Apollo 13 underwater.”
Newman worked as a flight attendant as she wrote her debut novel, Falling, during her down time. It sold in three 7-figure deals: a worldwide publishing deal with Avid Reader/Simon & Schuster; foreign rights in more than 30 countries; and a $1.5 million movie deal with Universal.
In Drowning: The Rescue Of Flight 1421, “a plane crashes in the Pacific Ocean six minutes after takeoff and is flooded after an explosion during evacuation. A dozen survivors sink in a sealed part of the aircraft as it perches precariously on an undersea cliff 200 feet below the surface. Among them is an engineer and his 11-year-old daughter. His estranged wife — she’s also the girl’s mother — is part of the elite rescue team that races to save the passengers before their air runs out.”
Some of the filmmakers that wanted to grab the project include Steven Spielberg, Alfonso Cuaron, Damien Chazelle, Nicole Kidman, The Russo Brothers, M. Night Shyamalan, and producers such as Jerry Bruckheimer, Peter Chernin, and 21 Laps. The other studios that made bids included Paramount, Legendary, and Universal Television.
The movie will be produced by Shane Salerno, who took on Newman after her first book get rejected by 41 agents. Newman will be an executive producer on Drowning, the book of which will be published on May 30th by Simon & Schuster.
Source: Deadline