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Diane Cook Novel ‘New Wilderness’ to Be Adapted for TV With Warner Bros., Matt Reeves Producing

Warner Bros. Television has optioned the upcoming Diane Cook novel “The New Wilderness” for Matt Reeves’ production company, 6th & Idaho, to develop as a television series.

Cook will write the pilot and executive produce the series. Reeves, Daniel Pipski, and Adam Kassan will executive produce for 6th & Idaho, with Carly Wray serving as supervising producer. 6th & Idaho’s Rafi Crohn will co-executive produce. Both 6th & Idaho and Wray are under overall deals at WBTV.

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“The New Wilderness” follows a mother’s battle to save her daughter in a world ravaged by climate change. Bea’s five-year-old daughter, Agnes, is slowly wasting away, consumed by the smog and pollution of the overdeveloped metropolis that most of the population now calls home. If they stay in the city, Agnes will die. There is only one alternative: the Wilderness State, the last swath of untouched, protected land, where people have always been forbidden. Until now. Bea, Agnes, and eighteen others volunteer to live in the Wilderness State, guinea pigs in an experiment to see if humans can exist in nature without destroying it.

Cook’s writing has previously appeared in Harper’s, Tin House, Granta, and other publications, and her stories have been included in the anthologies Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She is a former producer for the radio program “This American Life” and was the recipient of a 2016 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

CAA represented the television sale of “The New Wilderness” on behalf of Seth Fishman of the Gernert Agency. 6th & Idaho is repped by CAA, 3 Arts Entertainment, and Jackoway Austen Tyerman. Wray is repped by Grandview and Gang Tyre.

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