Coming on top of an intense, high-value bidding war, Amazon MGM has landed the movie rights to The Last Letter, a romantic drama novel by Fourth Wing author Rebecca Yarros.
Journalist-turned-screenwriter Anna Klassen is in final talks to write the adaptation, with Brian Grazer and Jeb Brody of Imagine Entertainment in talks to produce.
Yarros is a phenomenon in the book work, taking the genre of romantasy into the mainstream with her Empyrean book series, which began with 2023’s Fourth Wing and that has now sold over 12 million copies. Letter, which is not a romantic fantasy but is rather a straight-up romance, is one of her earlier books and was re-released this year, hitting best-seller status and re-kindling Hollywood interest.
Letter was a weepie (oh, what a weepie!) that told of an Army vet who, fulfilling his promise to a fallen friend and soldier, travels to a bucolic Colorado town to help take care of his buddy’s sister and her two children. But oh, the drama. The man harbors a soul-crushing secret, one of the kids falls ill with cancer, and the woman feels she can’t trust this gorgeous dark and brooding man (oh, who also comes with a loyal dog).
The novel lit up BookTok and book clubs this year for the story’s almost too intense emotions. That didn’t stop studios and producers from engaging in a hot pursuit. Five companies jumped in, with Amazon, Netflix, and Paramount, the latter coming off this past weekend’s strong performance of romantic drama Regretting You, making muscular offers with ballooning prices and even ticking clocks to respond.
In the end, Amazon came on top with an option in the $200,000 range and a potential $2 million purchase price and hefty backends, according to multiple sources. Yarros will also act as an executive producer via her recently formed company, Full Measures, named after her first book.
It’s an impressive deal for something that is intended to be a mid-budget adult drama. But it speaks to the appetite for something that give of vibes of The Notebook, the hit romantic drama that starred Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, or Dear John, which starred Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried, and the growing power of Yarros.
This isn’t the author’s first time around the Hollywood rodeo. Fourth Wing is in development at Amazon as a television adaptation with Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s Kilter Films, and Premeditated Productions.
Klassen is becoming a go-to scribe in the romance space. She adapted the upcoming Anna Todd novel The Last Sunrise, which is currently in production at Amazon with Maia Reficco and Eva Longoria starring. A former journalist who wrote for Newsweek, The Daily Beast and Bustle, she launched her screenwriting career when with her spec, When Lightning Strikes, which centered on Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and landed at the top of the 2017 Black List.
Brody and Joyce Choi will oversee the project at Imagine, the prolific banner that recently made Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt and Ron Howard’s Eden.
Yarros is repped by Untitled and Weintraub Tobin. Klassen is repped by WME, Untitled and Myman Greenspan.
