Paramount Pictures Locks $2 Million Deal For Gabrielle Zevin Novel ‘Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow;’ Temple Hill Producing

EXCLUSIVE: Paramount Pictures won a brisk auction to acquire the Gabrielle Zevin novel Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow for $2 million. Temple Hill’s Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey and Isaac Klausner will produce w, and the author will write the script. Movie deal came right after a seven-figure North American rights deal from Knopf last week, in partnership with Penguin Canada. Chatto & Windus preempted the book in the UK 24 hours after it was submitted in London, and translation deals are in the process of being closed around the world. The book will be published sometime in the first half of 2022.

To Motion Pictures Group president Emma Watts, the book fit what Paramount is trying to do, which is to find new voices that will attract A-list filmmakers. The auction was exceptional. There were upwards of 25 offers from TV and film. Several hit the $2 million ceiling for the outright purchase, and it looks like a streamer or two surpassed it. Godfrey was key in closing the deal.

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Zevin wrote The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, which sold 4.5 million copies worldwide. She penned that script for BCDF Pictures and is producing with her frequent collaborator Hans Canosa. Tomorrow is the 10th novel from Zevin, who scripted Conversations With Other Women (Helena Bonham Carter, Olivia Wilde). The author also will be executive producer.

Town sparked to a pitch that describes a novel that does for video games what The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay did for comic books. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a modern love story about two friends who meet as children and reunite as adults to create video games, finding an intimacy in digital storytelling that eludes them in their real lives. The relationship explores the intimacy, passion, and heartbreak of creative collaboration, set against the visually groundbreaking worlds brought to life by the rising video game industry of the 1990s-2000s.

Paramount’s Bryan Oh and Daria Cercek brought in the property to the studio along with Temple Hill’s Avital “Bugsy” Siegel. CAA brokered the deal with Sterling Lord Literistic’s Douglas Stewart and Cohen Gardner LLP.

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