Hulu has landed rights to Olga Dies Dreaming, a highly anticipated debut novel from author Xochitl Gonzalez.
The streamer has ordered a pilot for an adaptation of the book, which is set for publication in January 2022 by Flatiron Books (which won a 10-way auction for the manuscript). Gonzalez will write the script, and Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Hunters) will direct. Disney’s 20th Television is producing.
Olga Dies Dreaming centers on a Nuyorican brother and sister who live in the gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood of Sunset Park. They reckon with their absent, politically radical mother and their glittering careers among New York City’s elite in the wake of Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands in 2017.
Gonzalez is an MFA candidate at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she’s a recipient of the Michener Copernicus Award for Fiction. She’s also contributed to Vogue, The Cut, Ninth Letter and Joyland Magazine. She and Gomez-Rejon teamed up after he read the novel’s manuscript, and they developed the potential series together. Both will serve as executive producers.
A Brooklyn native, Gonzalez worked as an entrepreneur and strategic consultant for 15 years before pursuing her master’s degree in writing. She is repped for publishing and TV and film by CAA and Granderson Des Rochers. Gomez-Rejon is repped by CAA and Ziffren Brittenham.
