Warner Bros. Wins Fevered Weekend Auction For T.J. Newman Novel ‘Drowning: The Rescue Of Flight 1421;’ Deal Reaches $1.5M Against $3M
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: In one of the wildest book rights auctions the town has seen in some time, Warner Bros. production co-heads Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy tonight landed screen rights to the upcoming T.J.
Newman novel Drowning: The Rescue Of Flight 1421. Studio paid $1.5 million against $3 million, and there were five seven-figure bids on the table, sources said.
It’s the second splashy thriller novel set in the world of aviation written by Newman, who worked as a flight attendant as she wrote her debut novel Falling, which sold in three 7-figure deals: a worldwide publishing deal with Avid Reader/Simon & Schuster; foreign rights in more than 30 countries; and a $1.5 million movie deal with Universal and Working Title.
The debut novel became the fastest-selling fiction debut for Simon & Schuster since 2004. In her second novel Drowning, a plane crashes in the Pacific Ocean six minutes after takeoff and is flooded after an explosion during evacuation.
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