Terry McMillan’s ‘I Almost Forgot About You’ Film Rights Acquired By Jackal Group
by Anita Busch via Deadline on 05/12/2017
EXCLUSIVE: The Jackal Group has acquired the feature film rights to Terry McMillan’s bestselling novel I Almost Forgot About You, which like her other books — Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back — has gotten critical kudos. Gail Berman and Joe Earley will produce the project through their Jackal Group banner. This book will mark the fifth of the author’s to be adapted for a movie and the third to be put on the big screen.
I Almost Forgot About You tells the story of Georgia Young, a successful doctor who seemingly has everything — a great family, good friends and a wonderful career — but it isn’t enough. Feeling stuck and restless, she is determined to make major changes in her life and so decides to track down her former lovers. What follows is a series of second chances, but also self-discovery about the choices she has made.
The book, published by Crown, became a New York Times bestseller (just like the author’s previous seven books did). Other novels published by McMillan are Getting to Happy, Who Asked You?, The Interruption of Everything, and four of her books have been made into movies. Besides Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Disappearing Acts was produced by HBO Pictures and A Day Late and a Dollar Short was produced by Lifetime.
Rory Koslow will oversee this latest project, I Almost Forgot About You, on behalf of the company.
The Jackal Group, which is a fully-financed production studio which runs the gamut of content creation — film, TV series for network, cable and streaming, digital productions and even legit stage production. It was launched as a co-venture with Fox Networks Group and two years ago entered into a first-look agreement with Fox 2000.
The company, founded by Berman, has a number of books that it is developing in to feature films including Live Fast Die Hot from author Jenny Mollen who is also adapting it at Warner Bros. and has Anne Hathaway attached to star as well as Turn of Mind, the thriller from author Alice LaPlante which is being adapted by Doug Wright and set up at Fox 2000. It also has other IPS in development, including The Addams Family at MGM and The Untitled Elvis Presley biopic at Warner Bros.
The Jackal Group is also behind a number of TV properties: Ridin’ Dirty for FX with Allyn Rachel, Fox’s TV remake of the The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the drama series Mansland at USA; Mattress World at Fox; Love and Murder in the Hamptons at Lifetime; Horrorstör, based on Grady Hendrix’s novel; Park Row, written by Robert Rodat; and the unscripted Group Chat at MTV. In addition, it recently accquired Chloe Benjamin’s upcoming 2018 novel The Immortalists as a cable series and late last year NBC put its single-camera workplace comedy #Blessed onto the network’s development slate.
McMillan is repped by WME for film and TV and by The Friedrich Agency for publishing.