Bookseller Dabbles in Filmmaking

By Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 9/2/2008 7:36:00 AM

Longtime bookseller and former ABA head Mitchell Kaplan has always loved movies, but it wasn't until he got the galley of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society that he realized he might actually be able to make one. Kaplan, who owns Books & Books in Coral Gables, Fl., optioned the book, recently published by Dial Press, with his longtime friend, producer Paula Mazur. Now the bookseller and the Hollywood player are bringing the project to the studios looking for a taker.

According to Kaplan, he has long wanted to work with Mazur, who's produced films like Nim's Island, "on something we both believed in." Kaplan initially got the galley of Peel in February at the ABA focus group meeting in Brooklyn. He said he "fell in love with [the book]" and sent it off to Mazur who felt similarly.

At BEA, which was in Los Angeles this year, Kaplan, Mazur and co-author Annie Barrows (who finished the book her now-deceased aunt Mary Ann Shaffer started) met to discuss the project. Kaplan said the trio had "a common vision for how the book could play out as a film," and, from there, he and Mazur then negotiated a deal for the film option with Barrows'  lit agent Liza Dawson (working with co-agent Amy Schiffman).

Mazur is now shopping the project in L.A. "working it through various studios," as Kaplan put it. The pair is also hoping this will be the first project of many and established the Mazur/Kaplan Company Kaplan to adapt more books "that we can maintain the integrity of when we bring them to the screen."

But Kaplan's foray into filmmaking isn't intended as a move away from bookselling. Quite the contrary. "I see this as a great compliment to what I do. A bookseller acts as a conduit in bringing a book to the consumer and bringing a book to film is very similar."