Mike Fleming

Hutch Parker The Life ListEXCLUSIVE: Fox 2000 has optioned film rights to The Life List, a debut novel by Lori Nelson Spielman that Ballantine Books will publish next year. Hutch Parker will produce the film through his Hutch Parker Entertainment banner. The book sees a young woman embark on a year-long journey of self-discovery after her mother passes away and leaves her an inheritance with one big stipulation — in order to receive it she must complete the items on a “life list” of goals she made for herself when she was 14. She reluctantly embarks on this bewildering and comedic journey through her adolescent dreams surprised to find the life, and the self, she’d lost along the way.

Gersh brokered the film deal for lit agent Jenny Bent. The book has been sold to the U.K., Germany, Italy, Spain, Holland, Brazil, and China. It becomes the second significant novel to be acquired by Fox for Parker since the former New Regency co-chairman exited and transitioned to a producing deal on the lot. The studio also acquired The Curiosity by Stephen Kiernan for Parker. His exec Aaron Ensweiler found the book.