Garrett Basch’s Dive Wins Rights To Develop Anthony Veasna So’s ‘Afterparties’ For TV; Lauren Yee To Exec Produce

EXCLUSIVE: In competition, Garrett Basch’s new company Dive has won the television rights to Afterparties, the collection of stories by Anthony Veasna So that became an instant bestseller when it was published last year by HarperCollins. The intention is to turn it into a half hour series, “a naturalistic comedy with heart,” based on the characters and anecdotes written by So about the lives of Cambodian-Americans. Lauren Yee will be Executive Producer. The author, the son of former Cambodian-American refugees, died before the book was published.

Dive’s Rachel Foley brought in the project and will oversee on behalf of the company. Dive will be executive producer along with Yee. The book is described by its publisher as seamlessly transitioning between the absurd and the tenderhearted, balancing acerbic humor with sharp emotional depth, an expansive portrait of a new generation of Cambodian-Americans as they shoulder the inherited weight of the Khmer Rouge genocide and grapple with the complexities of race, sexuality, friendship, and family.

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Courtesy ICM

The author, who described himself as “a failed computer scientist, a grotesque parody of the model minority,” graduated from Stanford University, where his writing and art won numerous awards and grants. The Stockton, CA native taught at Colgate University, Syracuse University, and the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants in Oakland, California. He died at age 28 of a drug overdose.

Yee is a playwright, screenwriter, and TV writer who is developing Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (author of Little Fires Everywhere) as a limited series for Annapurna, A-Major, and Apple. Yee recently wrote for the new Apple/Media Res television adaptation of Pachinko and is also currently serving as a Consulting Producer on the Color Force/FX limited series, The Sterling Affairs.

Dive currently has a first look deal with FX Networks where it has just wrapped the fourth season of What We Do in the Shadows and is gearing up for the second season of Sterlin Harjo’s series, Reservation Dogs. Dive’s new series, Our Flag Means Death, will premiere on HBO Max later this year and the company is also currently in production on Steven Zaillian’s Ripley for Showtime.

Yee is represented by ICM, Map Point and she is lawyered by Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole.

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