Tweets Are the New Black: NYT Reporter’s Twitter Book to Be Made for TV
You just knew it would make it to the screen someday.
Los Angeles entertainment studio Lionsgate announced Wednesday it had optioned the rights to “Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal,” the tumultuous tale penned by New York Times columnist and reporter Nick Bilton. Alongside executive producer Allison Shearmur, Bilton is set to produce the pilot of the serialized show and write the first screenplay.
Lionsgate, of course, is the studio behind Netflix’s hit series “Orange Is the New Black,” as well as blockbuster films “Hunger Games” and “Twilight.”
“I am thrilled to work with Allison Shearmur and Lionsgate to adapt my book about the power, betrayal and billions of dollars that swirl through Silicon Valley,” Bilton said in a press release. “The story of ‘Hatching Twitter’ really speaks to a generation that has searched for friendship through technology and it will be very exciting to see it brought to life on screen.”
If you’ve read the book, the Lionsgate deal isn’t exactly a surprise. The narrative reads like a serialized drama, a chaotic ride of infighting among a set of flawed founders who stumbled upon the idea for one of the biggest social media networks of the past 20 years. As Mark Zuckerberg supposedly put it, “[Twitter is] such as mess — it’s as if they drove a clown car into a gold mine and fell in.”
Fun! Perhaps a “Social Network” redux, of sorts. And likely something that Hollywood types are looking for — especially after the flopped Randi Zuckerberg series “Silicon Valley.”
What I really want to know is, who’s going to play whom on screen? Seth Green as @Sacca? J.K. Simmons as Dick Costolo? (Ouch!)
All I know is, if I were Jack Dorsey right now, I’d be chatting up Ryan Gosling big time.