Warner Bros Pictures has optioned Under Story, the upcoming novel by Chloe Benjamin, the author of The New York Times bestseller The Immortalists.
David Heyman and Jeff Clifford are on board to produce what would be a feature adaptation via their of Heyday Films, the banner behind the Harry Potter movies and the awards season player Jay Kelly.
The book, which doesn’t hit book stores until September 2026 from Putnam, is described as an ambitious exploration of the power of second chances and the hope that the impossible might also be true.
The story centers on a former biologist who has tried to escape her life by working at research station in Antarctica. A visual disturbance, however, draws a group of physicists to the location, her ex-husband among them. Now the woman sees a chance to turn back the clock and relive their love story a second time, but this time by doing things differently.
Execs Jesse Ehrman and Kevin McCormick will oversee for Warners. Erin Hoffman, the studio’s vp of literary affairs, was integral in bringing the project to Warners.
Benjamin, who graduated from Vassar College and holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin, made her novel debut in 2014 with The Anatomy of Dreams, which received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was long-listed for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.
She followed that up with The Immortalists, a drama that explored the ideas of destiny versus choice in a story about four siblings who are told their futures by a psychic and the ensuing decades of their lives. The novel was a massive sales hit and was named best book of 2018 by NPR, The Washington Post and Entertainment Weekly. It is currently in development for television at Netflix, with 21 Laps Entertainment producing.
Translation rights for Under Story have already sold in Dutch (Meulenhoff), German (Btb/Penguin Random House), Italian (Rizzoli) and are at auction for Spanish rights to Urano.
Benjamin is repped by WME.
