Sue Kroll’s recently launched production banner Kroll & Co. has picked up the rights to Jonathan Lethem’s new novel, “The Feral Detective,” through her exclusive deal at Warner Bros. Pictures.
Lethem’s first detective story since his New York Times bestseller “Motherless Brooklyn” will be published in November 2018, according to the production company’s Wednesday announcement.
“The Feral Detective” centers on Phoebe Siegler, a sarcastic and garrulous woman who heads to California to try to find her best friend’s missing teenaged daughter. When a lead brings her to the stark and seedy desert towns just east of Los Angeles, Phoebe is put in contact with Charles Heist, a laconic, strange private eye with an uncanny ability to find those that don’t want to be found, who reluctantly agrees to help. She dubs him The Feral Detective. As the unlikely pair traverse the stunning desert and its enclaves and get closer to the missing girl, their lives are placed in increasing jeopardy.
Kroll serves as an executive producer on Edward Norton’s film adaptation of “Motherless Brooklyn,” which is currently in post-production and stars Norton, Bruce Willis, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Willem Dafoe and Alec Baldwin.
“Jonathan is one of America’s greatest storytellers and, without hyperbole, a true literary genius,” said Kroll in a statement. “‘The Feral Detective’ is similarly brilliant, and also a wild, funny, contemporary, and genre-defying piece of literature that represents the type of stories I want to continue to tell through Kroll & Co. I am thrilled to be able to help bring his novel to the screen.”
Lethem added, “It’s a thrill having Sue Kroll capture ‘The Feral Detective’ for the screen. From the moment we first spoke, Sue persuaded me she saw Phoebe and Charles, and their wild ricochet through the book’s barbaric landscape, in uniquely cinematic terms. What luck for me to have Sue find the book and begin to make it her own.”
WME brokered the deal on behalf of Lethem and the novel. Stewart Brookman of Hansen, Jacobson negotiated on behalf of Kroll & Co.
Kroll & Co. recently announced its first acquisition of Peter Kornbluh’s gripping Politico article “My Dearest Fidel: A Journalist’s Secret Liaison with Fidel Castro,” which Kroll will develop and produce alongside Gal Gadot and Jaron Varsano.