"Fire and Fury" Book Is About to Break New Ground

Ok. You could just about guess that this is where this was going.

Michael Wolff’s book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” is a hit, no doubt. How valid, or how accurate the portrayals in the book may be, there’s no denying that it caught the interest of the public, and now it’s going further.

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According to The Hollywood Reporter, “Fire and Fury” is about to become a TV series.

Endeavor Content and purchased the film and television rights to the book, in what is rumored to be a 7-figure TV deal.

Endeavor is the financing and sales arm of William Morris Endeavor and IMG.

Wolff will executive produce the series, with veteran Channel 4 and BBC executive Michael Jackson — now CEO of indie producer Two Cities Television — also on board to produce.

Fire and Fury, which tells the inside story of Donald Trump’s first year as president based on Wolff’s exclusive access to the White House, has been the publishing sensation of 2018. The book had attracted little attention since it was first announced in November. But earlier this month, The Guardian leaked news from the heavily embargoed book and authorized excerpts in New York and a column The Hollywood Reporter — where Wolff serves as a columnist — created a sensation. Trump attacked both the book and former adviser Steve Bannon, who was one of Wolff’s principal sources. Bannon later stepped down from Breitbart News in the aftermath of the publication of his comments in the book.

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The popularity of the book, combined with this crazy point in history we’re now living through, made the idea of transferring it to TV series a natural progression.

The release date of the book was moved from January 9 to January 5, after the White House tried to block its release.

Bookstores sold out in minutes.

It shot to the number one spot on the New York Times best-seller list, after only 2 days of sales.

In less than a week, there were over 700,000 copies shipped and 1.4 million hardcovers on order, which makes it the fastest selling non-fiction book in publisher Henry Holt’s history.

Ok. I know there are some who would dispute the characterization of the book as “non-fiction,” but there it is.

To date, rights to the book have been sold in 32 countries. It is currently the best-selling book of any genre worldwide. (A Spanish-language edition is set for Feb. 28, with subsequent takes in Arabic, Albanian, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Japanese, French, German and other languages also planned.)

Fire and Fury comes to the small screen after HBO canceled a planned series based on the 2016 election in what was poised to be a Game Change sequel of sorts. The pay cabler scrapped the project after sexual harassment allegations emerged regarding source material co-author Mark Halperin, who was poised to pen the script alongside John Heilemann. That opened the door for a Trump tell-all, with demand high for Fire and Fury given Wolff’s cinematic writing and fly-on-the-wall detail.

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This will be the largest deal, to date, for Endeavor Content.

The project is now being shopped to networks, but given the popularity of the book, finding a home for it on the small screen shouldn’t be a problem.

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