Hollywood Reader

TV producer Ashton Kutcher has already Punk'd audiences on MTV and introduced Beauty and the Geek to the WB. Can he pull off a small-screen hat trick with The Suburban You: Reports from the Home Front? Corporate exec Mark Falanga's first book (Broadway, 2004)—about his misadventures as a Chicago suburbs transplant—was just optioned by Katalyst Films, the production company of the former That '70s Show costar and 20th Century Fox Television, to develop as a comedy pilot for ABC. Tube veteran Brian Kelley (Joey; The Simpsons) will write the half-hour pilot. The deal was negotiated by Endeavor's Lisa Harrison, who shopped the book to TV companies; David Kuhn of Kuhn Projects reps Falanga for lit.

The fantastical combination of Scrabble, shopping and a spry old granny with an enchanted dog-skin purse sounds like a brew for potential cinematic success, but you don't need to tell producer David Kirschner. His self-titled production company specializes in both genre (2004's Seed of Chucky; 2001's Frailty) and family flicks (2003's Secondhand Lions), thus making "The Faery Handbag"—the Hugo Award–winning first short story from Kelly Link's whimsically dark collection Magic for Beginners (Small Beer Press, 2005; reprint coming this fall from Harvest)—a natural choice for Kirschner. The Gersh Agency's Sarah Self reps Link for film, and Renee Zuckerbrot, of the Renee Zuckerbrot Literary Agency, reps Link for lit.

Imagine The Joy Luck Club, but with less angst and more boytalk, and you've got the idea behind Michelle Yu and Blossom Kan's China Dolls (to be published by Thomas Dunne Books this winter). Producer Alex Rose (Norma Rae; Quigley Down Under) was approached by Kan at a screenwriting conference and immediately optioned the manuscript after reading it. This lighthearted romp about three Asian-American Manhattanites balancing life, love and cheongsams presents a multicultural look at surviving stereotypes in the city. First-time novelists (and cousins) Yu and Kan, who are respectively employed as an on-air sports reporter for the NY1 network and as a lawyer, will also adapt their own work for the screen. Yu and Kan are repped by Natasha Kern of the Natasha Kern Literary Agency.

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