George and Grant to produce thriller Tangerine

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[size=48]'The Iron Lady' Scribe Abi Morgan to Adapt Thriller 'Tangerine'
12:00 PM PDT 3/14/2018 by Mia Galuppo
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Abi Morgan

George Clooney and Grant Heslov will produce the Imperative Entertainment feature.

Abi Morgan, the writer behind The Iron Lady and Suffragette, will write the psychological thriller Tangerine.
The feature — based on an upcoming novel from Christine Mangan, set to be published by HarperCollins imprint Ecco — will be set in 1950s Morocco and follows once inseparable roommates who, after an unexpected encounter in Tangier, attempt to rekindle their friendship only to find their dark, tangled backstory reemerges.
Imperative Entertainment (All the Money in the World, The Square) is developing the feature with Dan Friedkin and Bradley Thomas producing. George Clooney and Grant Heslov will also produce via their Smokehouse Pictures banner.
Jillian Apfelbaum will co-produce for Imperative, with Smokehouse’s Kerry Foster serving as executive producer.
Morgan, whose credits also include the TV series The Hour and The Split, is repped by CAA and the U.K.'s 42. 

Thank you, Annemarie. Great news

Your welcome Pan.

Interesting. Maybe Way2Old can answer this. Just how would this work? Do people often agree to produce projects based on unpublished works? How do they know if it's any good? Would an author shop their work around  to producers before it's published, or would the publisher set up the deal to boost sales when the book does come out? Just seems a little odd to me.

Here's everything we need to know - have a feeling that we've been a bit slow off the mark!

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Sorry, PAN, but that publisher's promo doesn't help me at all. Especially when they ask if you are a Christine Mangan fan - right after saying this is her debut novel! Were we supposed to be reading her notes? How can we be fans if this is the first thing she's published? Or is she an on-line presence that I (Luddite that I am) just haven't heard of?

I guess I'll just wait until the movie comes out.

See what you mean, Lizzy, but when you click on the 'read more' button to get the rest of the plot you realise the book's been out a while, it's been optioned by Smokehouse, and is due to star Scarlet Johansson...........!

We did originally post about this project back in November 2016.  It’s under George’s Film and TV thread.

Thanks, Donnamarie. That post helped.  So George and Mangan are both repped by CAA. I'm assuming that they started shopping the movie rights around at the same time they were looking for a publisher. I wonder if George got first look.

Lizzy, it might help to know that the major publishers have internal divisions devoted solely to movie production rights. And those divisions have relationships with agencies and production companies, with the mission being to match their authors' work with material that the filmmakers are looking for, or might be interested in. These days, they try to identify the ones with the most movie-conducive material before they're even published. So the movie rights can be sold even before the book comes out. Obviously, that's a coup for them and the author.

I've done a couple of pre-publication book coverage gigs for production companies. They want the book broken down and summarized, to help them decide whether or not to pursue. One company I work with doesn't bother to read the books. If they like the basic story and concept, they then look at the packaging potential for actors and directors. A lot of the companies operate like that. They want something that has a built-in audience to start, and then market the hell out of it.

Thanks, Way2Old. I kind of thought it was something like that, but I had no idea it was such an established part of the publishing industry. Seems to me it's an iffy proposition for both sides. If a production company buys a book without reading it because they like the concept, there's a good chance the movie will be nothing like the book. Could make for a very unhappy author.

If the producers stick closely to the book and the book doesn't sell, that could hurt the movie. I guess they could get lucky. The book could sell well and the movie could make a ton of money. Everyone's happy.

I still don't see how any general reader can be a fan of an unpublished author.

LizzyNY wrote:Seems to me it's an iffy proposition for both sides. If a production company buys a book without reading it because they like the concept, there's a good chance the movie will be nothing like the book.

True. And probably explains why so many films are so different from the book. I know a few people, myself included, who won't go and see a film of a book we liked because it's so different.

Katie - I know how you feel. Right now I feel like that about A Wrinkle In Time. I taught the book, and really enjoyed it. From the trailers I've seen, I'm not sure about the movie. I don't want it to spoil the book for me.

To be clear, the book doesn't go unread all the way through the filmmaking process. The writer who adapts it reads it, obviously, and so does the director, and most likely the actors (but not always). But the producers are basically dealing with the creatives' take on the book rather than the source material itself. They only care if the movie version is marketable or not; whether it sticks to the source material is secondary.

Way2Old - I get what you're saying, but I doubt the book's author sees it the same way. I know many books don't translate well to the screen as written, so they have to be edited and adapted. I just sometimes wonder if the changes to make a book more cinematic don't change the message the author intended.

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By LAMBETH HOCHWALD  @LambethHochwald

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If you’ve ever been intrigued by Morocco and its exotic allure, Tangerine, a debut novel by author Christine Mangan, is one book to add to your must-read list this spring. Already optioned by George Clooney with Scarlett Johansson attached in a starring role, Tangerine is an unsettling and startling portrait of female friendship in 1950s Morocco with plenty of unexpected twists. Mangan recently talked to Parade about her inspiration, the upcoming movie and the book’s exotic setting.

This is your debut novel and it has already been optioned. Congrats!

It was really exciting. It happened at the same time the book sold. I was talking to editors and movie people in California which was fun because, at the time, I was teaching in Dubai. I was up late talking to New York and up early talking to California.

How do you feel about Scarlett Johansson playing the lead?

I didn’t have anyone in particular in mind when I was writing Tangerine, but I’m a fan so I’m excited about it.

What made you want to set the book in Morocco?

I had been to Morocco before, but, in 2015, when I started thinking about this book, taking down notes and planning it out, I had just been to Tangier. It was right around the time I was finished with my thesis in Dublin. There’s something so unique about Tangier. It’s so different from any other place and it has this vibrant history of writers that had passed through. I found it to be such a different place than anywhere else I’d ever been. When I left I kept thinking about Tangier so I figured that meant something.

Tell us about the title.



I remember meeting this man in Tangier who said to me ‘you’re a tangerine now’ and that’s when I learned that ‘tangerine’ is the word locals call expats who come to Tangier.

Why did you set the novel in the 1950s?

There was so much going on in Morocco at that moment and time in history. We have the city on the cusp of independence and there’s this revolutionary spirit in the country. The women in the book are coming to terms with autonomy and identity and, by setting the book in this place and time, I wanted to create that extra layer of tension.

The book really takes the reader back in time.

I hope Tangerine takes readers to another place, a different setting and a different time period. When I wrote it I wanted it to confuse readers and inspire readers to think about and speculate about what’s happening between these two women and hopefully the book feels as overwhelming as Tangier can be.

Why do we like thrillers?

It’s such an interesting question. My thesis is on gothic literature and, back in the 18th century, those books were considered less than great novels but people would flock to them nonetheless. People like to be scared, engaged with the story and lose themselves in the book and thrillers let you do that. I’m working on a draft right now of a second novel that’s another psychological thriller. We’ll see how that goes but I know audiences are drawn to these sorts of stories.

I didn't know Scarlett was in the cast. 

Also: 

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March 26, 2018 AT 11:30 AM EDT

Tangerine (Novel)

TYPEBookGENREThrillerPUBLISHEREccoPAGES308PUBLICATION DATE03/27/18AUTHORChristine Mangan

WE GAVE IT A [size=36]C+[/size]

The crowded book-to-movie pipeline has another hot title to welcome. Tangerine, the thriller debut by Christine Mangan, sold in the seven figures to HarperCollins in 2016 and was swiftly optioned by none other than George Clooney; Scarlett Johansson and scribe Abi Morgan (Shame, The Iron Lady) have since signed on to star and write. Put simply, it’s got quite a pedigree.
And it’s not hard to see why. Tangerine is cinematically engineered, an aromatic stew of ingredients ripe for a big-screen treatment — exotic ’50s setting, unreliable narrators with inscrutable motivations, mysteries clouded in madness. The book begins with an ambiguous prologue, then introduces Alice — a near-agoraphobic newlywed transported to Morocco by her obnoxious husband, John — and then her scheming college roommate, Lucy, a woman also new to Tangier who is looking to track down her estranged partner (in crime?). The two women were involved in an unspeakable “accident” during their college years, and Alice appears desperate to forget it; when John disappears upon Lucy’s arrival, it seems tragedy is once again around the corner.

[url=https://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/link/?url=http%3A%2F%2Few.com%2Fbooks%2F2018%2F03%2F26%2Ftangerine-christine-mangan-book-review%2F&media=https%3A%2F%2Fewedit.files.wordpress.com%2F2017%2F12%2F91k4zxq8ukl.jpg&description=The George Clooney-optioned Tangerine<%2Fem>%C2%A0will make a better movie than it does a book%3A EW review][/url]
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Ecco
The plotting all but demands comparisons to Patricia Highsmith; the sweaty, paranoid atmosphere screams Hitchcock. This isn’t to say Tangerine is at the level of those masters. It’s deliberately evocative of them. And once that initial intrigue wears off, Mangan’s touch loses its luster rather quickly. Her style feels more imitative than original, a dispiriting reminder of what more daring storytellers could do here. The writing is laborious, particularly early on, and Mangan’s Hitchcock emulation turns problematic as confounding sexual politics increasingly drive the narrative. It becomes clear that there’s not enough of a story here: The twists are fun, but hardly jaw-dropping, and the descriptive redundancies feel like padding for a book thinner than its page count suggests.
What Mangan has done — quite well — is lay the foundation for a better movie. The book is undeniably readable, even at its clunkiest, and some of its scenes are vividly imagined. One flashback involving Alice, Lucy, and a bracelet should make for an indelibly unsettling screen moment. If only it were as good on the page. C+


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