Entertainment
EXCLUSIVE: QC Entertainment, the production company behind recent Best Picture Oscar contenders BlacKkKlansman and Get Out, has snapped up rights to J.D. Barker’s forthcoming erotic thriller novel Behind a Closed Door in a preemptive bid, with plans to adapt it for film.
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The acquisition follows QC’s work with Barker on The Fourth Monkey, a show to adapt his award-winning, bestselling novel series of the same name. QC will, as in that case, produce alongside Spin a Black Yarn, which reps the writer.
Billed as 50 Shades of Grey meets David Fincher’s The Game, Behind a Closed Door introduces readers to Sugar & Spice, the latest app craze taking the world by storm, which leads downloaders Abby and Brendan Hollander into a dangerous game of life and death. When the app assigns the pair a series of increasingly taboo tasks, they soon find themselves caught up in a twisted web of seduction and violence.
Sean McKittrick and Raymond Mansfield will produce the film adaptation for QC Entertainment, with Ryan Lewis and Josh Malerman for Spin a Black Yarn. QC’s Edward H. Hamm Jr. will exec produce alongside Barker. The companies will next take the book to filmmakers and cast before approaching studios with the package later this year.
A New York Times and international bestselling author of numerous novels, including Dracul and the Fourth Monkey series, Barker’s books have been translated into two dozen languages and sold in more than 150 countries, while being optioned for both film and television, as previously mentioned. His latest with James Patterson, Death of the Black Widow, was released April 19th.
Led by partners McKittrick, Mansfield and Hamm, QC Entertainment is best known for producing the critical and commercial successes Get Out and BlacKkKlansman — from filmmakers Jordan Peele and Spike Lee, respectively — having been involved in every aspect of both projects, from development to production and release. The films, scoring back-to-back Best Picture Oscar nominations for QC, also each claimed screenplay prizes. McKittrick also produced Peele’s sophomore effort Us, which notched $70.3M domestic in its opening weekend alone, achieving the biggest opening ever for an original horror film. QC’s latest feature, It Lives Inside — a horror-thriller from filmmaker Bishal Dutta — won the Midnighters Audience Award at SXSW 2023 and will be released by Neon later this year.
Lewis and Josh Malerman formed Spin a Black Yarn after the success of Netflix’s 2018 Sandra Bullock starrer Bird Box, based on the New York Times bestseller by Malerman. The post-apocalyptic horror thriller, on which Lewis served as an EP, for a time held a record as the streamer’s most-watched title within 28 days of release. Lewis and Malerman have since produced the psychological horror film We Need to Do Something, which was released by IFC Films after bowing at Tribeca, and are exec producers on a new Netflix-bound Bird Box movie set in Barcelona, which is currently in post-production.
Barker is represented by Lewis of Spin a Black Yarn and Alec Shane of Writers House; QC Entertainment by Chris Abramson of Felker Toczek Suddleson.
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