By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

KROLL & CO. ENTERTAINMENT ACQUIRES JONATHAN LETHEM’S THE FERAL DETECTIVE

Posted Wednesday, May 30th, 2018 - Comments Off on KROLL & CO. ENTERTAINMENT ACQUIRES JONATHAN LETHEM’S THE FERAL DETECTIVE
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Los Angeles, CA (May 30, 2018) – Kroll & Co. Entertainment, the recently launched production company of producer Sue Kroll, has acquired the rights to Jonathan Lethem’s new novel, The Feral Detective, through her exclusive deal at Warner Bros. Pictures. The highly anticipated novel—Lethem’s first detective story since hisNew York Times bestseller Motherless Brooklyn—sold to Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, and will be published in November 2018.

 

The Feral Detective follows Phoebe Siegler, a sarcastic and garrulous woman who heads to California to try to find her best friend’s missing teenaged daughter. When a lead brings her to the stark and seedy desert towns just east of Los Angeles, Phoebe is put in contact with Charles Heist, a laconic, strange private eye with an uncanny ability to find those that don’t want to be found, who reluctantly agrees to help. She dubs him The Feral Detective. As the unlikely pair traverse the stunning desert and its enclaves and get closer to the missing girl, their lives are placed in increasing jeopardy.

The project furthers the collaborative relationship between the award-winning author and Kroll. Previously announced, she serves as an executive producer on Edward Norton’s film adaptation of Motherless Brooklyn, teaming with producers Norton, William Migliore, Gigi Pritzker and Rachel Shane, and executive producers Michael Bederman, Adrian Alperovich, Robert F. Smith, Brian Sheth and Daniel Nader. Currently in post-production, the film stars Norton, Bruce Willis, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Willem Dafoe and Alec Baldwin.

“Jonathan is one of America’s greatest storytellers and, without hyperbole, a true literary genius,” said Kroll. “The Feral Detective is similarly brilliant, and also a wild, funny, contemporary, and genre-defying piece of literature that represents the type of stories I want to continue to tell through Kroll & Co. I am thrilled to be able to help bring his novel to the screen.”

 

Lethem added, “It’s a thrill having Sue Kroll capture The Feral Detective for the screen. From the moment we first spoke, Sue persuaded me she saw Phoebe and Charles, and their wild ricochet through the book’s barbaric landscape, in uniquely cinematic terms. What luck for me to have Sue find the book and begin to make it her own.”

Jonathan Lethem is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including Dissident Gardens and The Fortress of Solitude. He is an NBCC Award winner, a recipient of a MacArthur genius grant, and is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker.

WME brokered the deal on behalf of Lethem and the novel. Stewart Brookman of Hansen, Jacobson negotiated on behalf of Kroll & Co.

Through her exclusive deal at Warner Bros. Pictures, Kroll & Co. recently announced its first acquisition of Peter Kornbluh’s gripping Politico article “My Dearest Fidel: A Journalist’s Secret Liaison with Fidel Castro,” which Kroll will develop and produce alongside Gal Gadot and Jaron Varsano.

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ABOUT KROLL & CO. ENTERTAINMENT

Kroll & Co. Entertainment is a Warner Bros.-based production company dedicated to bringing fresh and original stories to life beyond the page. Launched in 2018 by industry leader Sue Kroll, the company seeks to be a collaborative partner for both new and established filmmakers, engaging with all aspects of the holistic filmmaking process—from development and story inception through exhibition and release—to champion and preserve the essential artistic vision of each project. In addition to feature films, the company will produce and develop television, digital and other content. As Producer, Kroll has a number of upcoming projects in various stages of development, including The Six Billion Dollar Man, starring Mark Wahlberg, who produces alongside Stephen Levinson, Bill Gerber, Scott Faye, and Karen Lauder; Nemesis, with producers Ridley Scott and Jules Daly; an untitled comedy starring Sandra Bullock, who will also produce with Michael Bostick; the YA dramaThe Selection, alongside producers Denise Di Novi and Pouya Shahbazian; a film based on Peter Kornbluh’s Politico article “My Dearest Fidel: A Journalist’s Secret Liaison with Fidel Castro,” with producers Gal Gadot and Jaron Varsano; and DC’s untitled Harley Quinn girl gang movie, starring Margot Robbie, who also produces alongside Bryan Unkeless, and to be directed by Cathy Yan. Kroll also serves as Executive Producer on Bradley Cooper’s A Star is Born, which Warner Bros. will release on October 5, 2018; Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn; John Crowley’s The Goldfinch, based on Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel; and the DC action adventure Blackhawk, which Steven Spielberg will produce with Kristie Macosko Krieger, under Amblin Entertainment.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon