Bad Robot Productions has landed rights to author Glennon Doyle’s best-selling memoir Untamed, winning the option in a competitive situation.
Bad Robot will develop the book for TV, with the author and Jessie Nelson — creator of the Bad Robot-produced Little Voice at Apple — co-writing the first episode. Warner Bros. TV, where Bad Robot is based, will produce, with the company’s head of television, Ben Stephenson, executive producing with Nelson and Doyle. Rachel Rusch Rich, executive vp television at Bad Robot, will co-exec produce.
“We were incredibly moved by Glennon’s story of coming to live more honestly, bravely, and fully, embracing the messiness that comes along with change,” said Stephenson and Rich. “Glennon’s own writing is sharp and funny and deeply felt, and we can think of no better partner to help bring her story to life than Jessie Nelson, whose work always has a profound and tender humanity, and we are thrilled to work with her again.”
Published in March by Penguin Random House, Untamed explores “the peace and joy we discover when we stop striving to meet the expectations of the world and start trusting the voice deep within us,” per the publisher’s description. The book was a selection of Reese Witherspoon’s book club.
“Untamed has sold over 1 million copies worldwide in fewer than 20 weeks and ignited a movement because women are in a collective moment of reckoning,” said Doyle. “We are looking at existing models of marriage, parenthood, religion, business, sexuality, and politics — and deciding that it’s time to let the old burn and imagine truer, more beautiful lives for ourselves, and a more equitable world for all of us. I can’t imagine a more important time or more perfect partners than Jessie Nelson and Bad Robot to help bring my story, our collective story, to television.”
Untamed joins a roster of Bad Robot productions that includes Little Voice, HBO’s Westworld, Lovecraft Country and the forthcoming Demimonde, and upcoming Apple series Lisey’s Story and My Glory Was I Had Such Friends. The company will also produce three shows for streamer HBO Max: Duster, Overlook and a show based on DC Comics’ Justice League Dark.
Doyle is repped by WME and Ziffren Brittenham. Nelson is with WME and Jackoway Tyerman.
