Why Hollywood Is in the Throes of an IP Frenzy

Lacey Rose and Lesley Goldberg
·9 min read

In mid-May, with the writers strike still in its infancy, UTA partner and media rights co-head Jason Richman found himself trying to gauge the industry’s appetite for dealmaking. A few years earlier, indie studio A24 had scooped up the rights to his client David Gauvey Herbert’s 2021 Esquire article, “Daddy Ball,” but the option had lapsed, and he was eager to test the market. So, Richman sent around the 6,700-word piece, about two Little League dads with complicated pasts who took a deep rivalry way too far. In a matter of weeks, there were eight offers, some of them with major talent like Ben Stiller or Jason Bateman attached.

Netflix, which was already in business with Bateman via his Aggregate Films, ultimately proved triumphant, plunking down what multiple sources say was a staggering $2 million outright for the article. Bateman would not only direct but also star in what’s being fast-tracked as a darkly comedic limited series for the streaming service. As one Netflix insider characterizes it, Bateman’s involvement, coming off Ozark, made it “a no-brainer.” And just like that, the floodgates reopened.

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In the five months since, the bidding wars have hardly slowed. Some say the flurry of media-rights sales is approaching early COVID days, the last time production ground to a halt and all of Hollywood had time on its hands to devour podcasts and novels and not simply the industry coverage. “IP is booming in general, but in both of these moments, people were sitting at home and they wanted to read,” says WME literary packaging agent Nicole Weinroth, who’s been involved in some of the bigger deals of late. Others suggest that the market has only grown more frenzied as more players enter the fray, and the dual strikes — first WGA, then SAG-AFTRA — meant IP was sellable in the way original ideas were not.

As for Richman, he never looked back. “Once we sorted out the rules of the game, in terms of how and what we were allowed to do, which were clean, pure rights sales that didn’t involve artists on strike,” he tells THR, “it felt like the response across the film and TV landscape was super vibrant.”

In short order, popular podcasts like The Retrievals (about a fentanyl scandal at a Yale fertility clinic) and The Girlfriends (about women banding together to bring a murderous ex to justice) ginned up a dizzying number of competitive offers. The market has been similarly frothy for juicy articles, such as Vanity Fair’s early August piece “True Crime, True Faith: The Serial Killer and the Texas Mom Who Stopped Him,” and in-demand books, including Sarah Harman’s debut novel, All the Other Mothers Hate Me.

“It was the only thing one could really do, so a lot of IP just flew out the door,” says an agency partner, who adds, “Everything that was half decent was getting six, eight, 10 offers, which quickly came down to three or four serious ones.”

The same names seem to come up again and again, names notably different than a decade or so ago. For years, the IP market had been fueled by the same old Hollywood studios along with a handful of literary-minded producers like Scott Rudin and Harvey Weinstein. By and large, they were acquiring rights to books that would be adapted for film. “We’ve seen a huge swing from five to 10 years ago, when 70 percent of IP selling was for film and 30 percent was for TV, and now it’s the opposite,” says prominent literary scout Marcy Drogin, who runs Maximum Films — though at least a few sellers note the appetite for film material has started to bounce back, if slowly and cautiously.

The market today is increasingly driven by a mix of streamers; celebrity-fronted pods like Margot Robbie’s red-hot company LuckyChap; and such well-capitalized independent producers as A24, Tomorrow Studios, MRC and CJ ENM-backed Fifth Season, which are actively gobbling up rights to books, comics, podcasts and articles. “And I see no sign of it slowing,” says Michelle Weiner, co-head of CAA’s books department, who attributes the uptick to “a combination of streaming and the volume that’s necessary to power a streaming service, as well as the number of TV studios that now exist out in the world and the number of independent financiers that are meaningful and successful.”

As for price tags, the industry has undergone a sizable shift there, too. A strong rights deal in TV, for instance, was once a $10,000 option against $100,000, says a top seller, who now regularly secures solid six-figure options and, occasionally, considerably more. As one in-house studio scout describes it, the A24s of the industry are responsible for “turning the market upside down.” In fact, as several point out, such legacy studios as Sony or Warner Bros. often can’t compete, or perhaps they simply choose not to. “I mean, they don’t even come fucking close,” says an agent who’s been in the middle of multiple bidding wars. “It’s like they still wish they could get shit for $25,000 options when it costs 10 times that now.”

To be sure, those giant fees were far more consistent in the early days of COVID, both because the industry was still in heavy spend mode and because intellectual property could still be packaged with writers and stars at that time. Though as one source, who’d just received seven bids on a decades-old title, tells THR: “Sometimes people just throw their hat in the ring because others are bidding and they don’t want to be left out, and then they lose their minds.”

Still, for much of the summer, only directors and producers could attach themselves to IP, and that put something of a cap, financially, on many of the deals. It didn’t seem to slow the most aggressive bidders, however. “Not unlike COVID, people really turned their attention to the media-rights space so that they could begin to have a slate of things to work on once the strikes were over,” says UTA’s other media rights co-head, Keya Khayatian. By all accounts, A24 has been the most active, with a seat at almost every negotiating table, where it regularly outbids the competition. Among the private equity-backed company’s recent wins is Paris Hilton’s memoir, which it will adapt for TV alongside Hilton’s 11:11 Media, Dakota and Elle Fanning’s Lewellen Pictures and David Bernad’s Middle Child Pictures. On the celebrity pod front, few companies can boast the momentum of LuckyChap. “If Margot Robbie puts her name on something now, it quickly gets frothy,” says a dealmaker. Hot off Barbie, her company recently won a bidding war for the rights to the classic Thin Man series, which it will produce with Plan B, and is in serious talks for at least one more hot property.

“The material that caught fire were things that felt like ripped-from-the-headlines stories and those that were commercial enough where anyone could read it and know what it should be,” says WME’s Weinroth, though one programmer scoffs, “Without a writer POV, who cares?”

It is among the reasons why agents, producers and programmers alike immediately got busy trying to attach scribes to all of the outstanding IP in the marketplace as soon as the WGA strike ended in September. Girlfriends, for instance, which sources say A24 and buzzy director Michael Showalter landed in a very competitive situation, was said to be seeking a female showrunner at press time. Sources say Netflix is looking for a writer for Daddy Ball (which is expected to change its title pre-air), and Hulu attached go-to showrunner Liz Tigelaar to the Lucy Foley mystery novel The Guest List that it had won at auction soon after the writers strike concluded.

If there are any trends to note, it’s that buyers are actively looking for big, commercial series ideas in their IP. Phrases like “economical” and “back to basics,” in reference to tried-and-true programming genres like procedurals and family dramas, have been uttered often. More specifically, sources say the success of Amazon’s The Summer I Turned Pretty, based on Jenny Han’s best-selling trilogy, whet the industry’s appetite for young adult content again; darker material has hits like The Last of Us, based on a PlayStation game, and Ryan Murphy’s Dahmer, which was ripped from the headlines, to thank for its comeback after a COVID-timed push toward blue skies fare.

But depending on whom you ask, the rabid appetite for IP is either a fleeting, overvalued byproduct of the moment (says one exec: “I read it as people were just bored and looking for busywork”) or a lasting necessity of an increasingly risk-averse industry. “A lot of writers don’t come up with original ideas, partly because the studios and networks aren’t really buying them,” says another agency partner. “So, if you have a good piece of material — a world, a conceit, a something — you instantly jump-start the conversation with writers.”

A partner at a rival agency suggests the boom is being fueled by the indie studios and celebrity-driven pods, which are “desperate” for a foothold. “They’re all lathered up over books and IP because if they don’t have it, they can’t get writers, and if they can’t get writers, they can’t get actors,” says the source, who adds: “And top writers are not going to add a pod onto a project just because. So, the pods need IP too.”

Rights (Aren’t) Available: Hot IP Sparks Bidding Wars

GLOSSY
Marisa Meltzer’s best-seller about Emily Weiss’ beauty brand, Glossier, landed at Amazon with Lindsey Beer (Pet Sematary: Bloodlines) attached for the series. Per sources, Amazon also froze doc rights on the property.

MARGO’S GOT MONEY TROUBLES
Sources say A24, Elle Fanning and David E. Kelley (who will co-write the script) are nearing a deal for Rufi Thorpe’s forthcoming novel about a young mother navigating adulthood on a meager bank account.

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL
The Vanity Fair story by Julie Miller about a serial killer and the mom who stopped him had the “town salivating,” per a source. Several more say the Jen Salke-led Amazon is in talks, and a celeb pod could soon join.

GODFALL
Van Jensen’s upcoming novel about the impact of a 3-mile-tall alien who falls from space into a Nebraska town has at least 10 bidders vying for television rights, according to multiple sources.

THE RETRIEVALS
Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap and Netflix are closing a deal for the podcast from Susan Burton and Serial Productions about a nurse who stole fentanyl and replaced it with saline at a Yale fertility clinic.

This story first appeared in the Oct. 25 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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