The short-story-to-Hollywood-deal pipeline

Good morning, it’s Monday, May 11 and you can expect blaring sunshine (high 70s).

The streaming boom has long since gone bust, ever-shrinking writers rooms continue to compress and many soundstages remain veritable ghost towns. It is, by all accounts, not a great moment in the Hollywood dream factory — or the ecosystem of prop houses and caterers and florists and dry cleaners that have long supported the industry. Sit a few minutes in the laptop section of any highbrow L.A. coffee shop and you’ll quickly start overhearing the gripes: No one is buying or greenlighting anything these days.

But as Hollywood scales back, a long-discounted literary genre has become a surprising conduit to industry success: the self-published short story. In a new L.A. Material report, Antonia Cereijido zeroes in on how short stories have improbably become the hottest format in town, and the role Reddit has played in all of this.

Short stories have driven multiple million-dollar deals, and bidding wars among distributors including Netflix, Amazon, and Universal. High profile stars from Michael B. Jordan to Nicole Kidman have signed on to adaptations. And the deal-making model has proven so successful that many established screenwriters are now foregoing pitches and spec scripts — for decades, the standard operating procedures for selling a film idea — and getting into the short story game themselves.

But there have also been questions about who some of the very unknown writers selling short stories are.

MONDAY: A week of overnight partial closures on the 101 in Hollywood begin tonight, so plan your club-going accordingly. There will also be partial overnight closures on the 210 in the Sylmar/Sun Valley area.

WEDNESDAY: The next televised L.A. mayoral debate is looking increasingly anticlimactic after Mayor Karen Bass pulled out over the weekend. (Spencer Pratt had already declined to attend, citing a scheduling conflict.) As of now, Councilmember Nithya Raman, Adam Miller and Rae Huang are still slated to face off during the event, which will air on Fox 11 at 6 p.m. 

THURSDAY: The University of Southern California’s commencement ceremony will be held in the evening, with Gustavo Dudamel as the main speaker. (And congratulations to L.A. Material’s own Tomo Chien, who will be joining us full-time after he graduates!)

The final gubernatorial debate before the June primary will also be held Thursday, airing on CBS. 

FRIDAY: Major League Baseball’s Freeway Series will kick off this evening, with the Dodgers playing at Angel Stadium. 

DARK MONEY: A mysterious nonprofit has been attacking left-wing City Council candidates. The L.A. Times’ David Zahniser digs into what’s known about the group (not much) and how the Supreme Court paved the way for its shadowy spending. 

SAMURAI SWORD ATTACK: After several days at large, a man was arrested for allegedly attacking another man with a samurai sword outside of a Venice apartment complex. The altercation took place outside of Venice Community Housing, where the suspect lived.

A NOD FOR MILLER: The Daily News’ editorial board endorsed Adam Miller for mayor, writing that while the entrepreneur lacks name ID, he is “clearly the best candidate on the ballot for anyone who is tired of the direction of Los Angeles and just wants someone competent in the mayor’s office.” (The Los Angeles Times is not putting out endorsements this cycle.)

‘CALL IT THE L.A.-IFICATION OF NEW YORK:’ As Erewhon moves east, The Hollywood Reporter dishes on how the city that never sleeps embraced smoothies, photo bans and morning people.  

For today’s peek inside our subscriber-only Discord server, a micro-review of Studio City’s Alto in the #i-was-here channel from @jasoneatssushi:

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: "L.A. Prayer" by Francisco X. Alarcon.

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