Hollywood is tapping a new source for movie ideas — blogs! I have heard of other projects based on websites, but this latest one, being developed for Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon, sounds like a real winner. Over on the deadline.com/New York site, Mike Fleming is reporting that Columbia Pictures has made a deal with blogger/author Ree Drummond for a romantic comedy, “The Pioneer Woman.”
Drummond is known as “The Pioneer Woman” who writes a popular blog with the same title, http://thepioneerwoman.com/ The website description says she’s “plowing through life in the country …one calf nut at a time.” Drummond is a self-confessed city girl who fell in love with a cowboy and is now making a lot of hay, ah, money writing and blogging about her life on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma.
Last year Drummond’s cookbook, “The Pioneer Woman Cooks, recipes from an accidential country girl,” came out and became a New York Times bestseller.
Next Valentine’s Day, William Morrow will release, “Black Heels to Tractor Wheels,” Drummond’s story of love and adventure in the country. On her website, Drummond describes the book as “… the complete saga (to date) of the rip-roaring true story of how I met my husband, Marlboro Man, and how I went from spoiled city girl to domestic ranch wife in the blink of an eye.”
Spec script season in full swing
Some interesting spec scripts making the rounds of the production companies and studios lately. Literary manager Kathy Muraviov is shopping, “The One” by Stan Evans, according to the Spec Chaser site. This is a romance about a woman who gets the ultimate choice: one week with her “soul mate” or a lifetime with a man she cares about, but who is not “the one.”
Also, spec scripts are being snatched up and bought. On the Spec Chaser, the spec screenplay “Ruthless,” by Cooper Layne, is marked sold!
“Ruthless” is a crime thriller about an ex-con who shows up suddenly in a small Louisiana town and begins to cause havoc by exposing the secrets of the town folks. The script sold to Double Nickel Productions.
