Jake Gyllenhaal doesn't do much TV, but he's jumping into a potential project with a series adaptation of Ian Parker’s New Yorker article A Suspense Novelist’s Trail of Deceptions, which chronicles a real-world book editor's complicated life, and which has director Janicza Bravo attached to make.
Parker's piece, which hit newsstands in February last year, has shades of Shattered Glass, telling the story for former editor Dan Mallory, who wrote (under a pseudonym) the novel that The Woman In The Window is based on. Despite a seemingly successful career, spun a web of lies about brain tumors he does not have and mourns family members who are not dead while preying on people’s sympathy to get away with almost anything.
"What may have started out as my dog ate homework turns into my mother died of cancers, my brother took his life and I have a double doctorate,” says Bravo, who will co-write the show with Brian Savelson. "Our protagonist is white, male and pathological. There is a void in him and he fills it by duping people. He’s a scammer. The series examines white identity and how we as an audience participate in making room for this behavior."
The new show doesn't have a home yet, but expect the usual suspects to show up to bid for it.