You’ve got to move fast in Hollywood if you want to get the rights to something hot. Only last week Houghton Mifflin Harcourt bought the publications rights to Joe Schreiber’s book Au Revoir Crazy European Chick, but already there’s been a bidding war for the film rights between Fox and Paramount, with the latter winning out.
Paramount has purchased the rights so that Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage’s (show-runners of Gossip Girl) youth-oriented Fake Empire production company can develop it for the screen. The book is a teen comedy with a twist, featuring a boy and his parents taking in an exhange student, who at first seems fairly ordinary and dowdy. However all is not as it seems, and when she convinces her exchange partner to ditch the school dance and head to New York, he realises she’s actually an assassin who’s been sent to take out five targets.
Fake Empire is currently looking for a writer for the project, so don’t expect to see this in cinemas for a while yet.