Producer Scott Glassgold has launched 12:01 Movies, a manufacturing firm which goals to establish, develop and produce creator-driven IP, primarily via brief tales because the foundational launching level.
Verve, which represents Glassgold, helped set up the brand new manufacturing firm. Over the past two years, Verve and Glassgold have closed 19 brief story gross sales, ushering in a brief story IP increase that 12:01 intends to stay on the forefront of.
That increase, Glassgold says, started with “My Spouse and I Purchased a Ranch” by Matt and Harrison Question. “It felt like this amazingly contemporary, distinctive style piece. And I knew instantly that there was a spot in it for movie and hopefully past.” He confirmed the Reddit brief story to Verve’s David Boxerbaum and Adam Levine, who shared his enthusiasm. Issues moved quick from there.
“This was on a Tuesday — I’m being literal. By Friday, the brief story went into an enormous bidding warfare that ended up promoting for over seven figures,” Glassgold says. The movie adaptation, which initially offered to Netflix, is now arrange at Amazon MGM with “Companion” filmmaker Drew Hancock on board to jot down and direct.
“The next week, we took the brief story into the publishing market,” Glassgold provides. “That, too, went into a really bidding warfare that finally, Grand Central ended up shopping for the rights to.” “‘My Spouse and I Purchased a Ranch’ was subsequently expanded and printed as a novel, titled ‘Outdated Nation.’”
“It spurred on this chance the place we began to grasp, ‘Hey, there’s some superb concepts happening over right here on Reddit and different locations.’ And earlier than you already know it, individuals had been sending tales to Scott, who would filter a variety of them out, ship us those that he thought had been nice, after which collectively, we might work on them and discover the via line. All of them every had what I might name a superb hook,” Verve co-founder Levine says. “Collectively, we had been in a position to determine then greatest put the best parts collectively to make it engaging for the Hollywood system.”
That secret sauce consists of figuring out brief tales (usually from Reddit), and ushering them via the complexities of each publishing and Hollywood variations concurrently. Key initiatives within the pipeline from this brief story equipment embody Aaron Jayh’s “The Dwelling” with Michael B. Jordan starring for Amazon Studios, Colin Bannon’s “Lengthy Misplaced” with Steven Spielberg for Amblin/Common, “I Am Not Alone” starring Jessica Chastain at Netflix, Marcus Kliewer’s “We Used to Reside Right here” starring Blake Full of life for Netflix, and Kliewer’s different story “Caretaker” with Sydney Sweeney starring at Common.
“Marcus bought to launch up to now,” Verve managing accomplice Liz Parker says of creator Kliewer’s ascendance in publishing. “He’s in a 3 guide contract. He had his first guide in ‘We Used to Reside Right here.’ He tailored it from a 40-page story to a 350-page story, and it took off on BookTok. It offered over 150,000 copies already, and he is ready to expertise his dream, which resides the lifetime of an creator full-time. He continues to jot down tales. We proceed to bundle them up, and it’s been a very, actually thrilling factor to observe.”
“We’re actually attempting to assist artists create their very own materials and develop their very own mental property, and develop it into a number of mediums, and do it in a means that form of is in synchronicity: the guide comes out, and that solely raises the profile and the thrill for the movie, and vice versa,” Glassgold says. “Our purpose is to be rising these items in a means that they’re informing each other and each empowering the artist and finally the fabric.”
“Greater than ever, we’re seeing consumers need a hand within the inventive course of, getting concerned earlier, in search of initiatives which are pre-packaged with robust expertise. That’s a shift, and it’s opening new doorways,” says Verve accomplice David Boxerbaum.
Whereas right this moment’s brief tales largely skew in direction of horror, Glassgold says 12:01 intends to be “agnostic to style,” specializing in pursuing contemporary and authentic tales no matter subject material.
“There’s two key components to any undertaking that I intention to assist develop and construct. It’s voice, that means the voice of the artist, it’s the concept, the central core concept of the piece of which that artist is making use of their voice,” Glassgold says. “It’s that mixture, on the finish of the day, that I believe finally yields these nice outcomes.”
