EXCLUSIVE: Oscar-winning producer Cathy Schulman (The Idea of You, Crash) and her Welle Entertainment banner are teaming with Netflix to develop a feature adaptation of the bestselling novel The Favorites by Layne Fargo.
Kate Gersten, the writer of Gia Coppola’s lauded drama The Last Showgirl starring Pamela Anderson, is penning the script. Schulman is producing for Welle Entertainment, with the company’s Kate Roughan executive producing.
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Less than a month after the world was mesmerized by Olympic figure skating — by real-life ice dancing couple Madison Chock and Evan Bates, as well as American gold medalist Alysa Liu — The Favorites enters the same emotionally charged world of elite skating.
Drawing inspiration from Wuthering Heights, the story follows the rise and fall of ice dancers Katarina Shaw and Heath Rocha, chronicling the pair’s decade-long professional and personal history as they navigate the price of ambition, the complexity of trauma, and the fine line between passion and destruction.
Originally published by Random House last January, the book has sold in 28 other markets, with 27 foreign translations.
A WGA Award nominee, Gersten has previously written on series like Mozart in the Jungle, The Good Place, and Schmigadoon! She is repped by CAA and Gregg Gellman at Yorn Levine.
Most recently producing the Fox series Memory of a Killer starring Patrick Dempsey, which premiered in January, Welle Entertainment’s other credits of late include Amazon’s The Idea of You starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine, which holds their record for the biggest rom-com debut on streaming with nearly 50 million global viewers globally in its first two weeks, as well as Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Golden Globe-nominated film The Woman King starring Viola Davis.
Fargo is repped by CAA and Sharon Pelletier at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.
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