From DHD – And Macmillan becomes the latest publisher to join the Hollywood fray, with the launch of a new division, Macmillian Films. Brendan Deneen, a former Hollywood development executive, will start the venture while continuing as an editor at Thomas Dunne Books.
With this move Macmillan joins the likes of Random House Films and Alloy Entertainment in trying to gestalt literary properties into Hollywood hits. The aforementioned go about their business in different ways – RHF is out to capitalize on their literary properties, and to that end has formed a joint venture with Focus Films, while Alloy Entertainment hatches ideas in-house and makes writer-for-hire deals (which are notoriously cheap).
Deneen has said Macmillan Films will fall somewhere in between RHF and Alloy Entertainment. If books come through Macmillan divisions, fine, but Deneen sees most of the properties coming from ideas generated in-house, and they will retain all rights through the development process (i.e. a bigger slice of the pie than just selling them off to Hollywood companies).
Macmillan Films will kick things off with a deal with Summit Entertainment for Tempest, a manuscript by Julie Cross that is meant to be the first in a trilogy. The protagonist is a 19-year old time traveler who witnesses his girlfriend’s murder just as he jumps back two years. Stuck in the near past, he’s recruited by a shadowy government agency run by the man he thought was his father. He vows to save his girlfriend no matter the cost. The book will be published by Thomas Dunne Books, a division of St. Martin’s Press. Sonny Mallhi is producing while Deneen will be executive producer with Roy Lee.
Beyond The Tempest, Macmillan Films hatched a 6-page treatment for a submarine thriller they’ve started to shop around, as well as Grimm City, a thriller based around “a number of hard to find Grimm Fairy Tales, that’s Sin City meets Neil Gaiman,” Deneen said. Ideas and concepts need approval from Deneen’s boss, Thomas Dunne, to make sure the properties will work as books.
“It’s a new way to control intellectual property because in this changing world, he who controls IP wins,” Deneen said. “Books will always be the core business here, but if you can be attached to the movie, the videogame and the Happy Meal, why not?”
But the real question is – will the writers see any real profit from this new venture?
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