This episode of The Town is presented to you by AMC Networks.

Billy Magnuson and Zach Galfinacus star in the new series The Audacity on AMC and AMC Plus.

Influence rises, people unravel, and CEO meltdowns are business as usual among Silicon Valley Elite,

executive produced by Jonathan Glasser, a writer-producer of succession and better call

Saul. The audacity premieres April 12th, only on AMC and AMC Plus.

It is Wednesday, April 1st. What do four of the big movies of the year so far at the box office have in

common? There's Project Hail Mary, Weathering Heights, reminders of him, The Housemaid, all four

are high-profile book adaptations, continuing the long tradition of books to screen, going all the

way back to the first Hollywood blockbusters like Casablanca 100 years ago.

These days, every movie producer is on the hunt for material that feels theatrical.

And if it's not a sequel or toy brand or pre-branded character, popular books are still the

next best thing, arguably more important than ever, as we seem to be coming out of an era where

superheroes were the big IP draw.

Those stories, remember, were also comic books.

Now, with the rise of female-focused authors like Colleen Hoover and Freedom McFadden,

big audience aggregators like Book Talk and the various celebrity book clubs,

Craig's a big fan of the Reese books.

The pre-branding of that built-in book audience can more reliably lead to a built-in audience for an original movie. That's giving more power to the book rights holders, according to the reps I've talked to. So it's time we did a check-in on that market. What genres and authors are hot right now, maybe who's fallen out of favor, and some of the prices that authors can get to option their work. I've got Jason Richmond on the show today. He's

an agent at UTA, the big talent agency, and we're going to talk about it all. Today, it's the

book-to-screen pipeline and the hot properties for movie and TV adaptations. From The Ringer

and Puck, I'm that Bellany and this is the town.

All right, we are here with Jason Richmond, who is a partner and co-head of the Media Rights Group at UTA.

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