Michael Novick & Kevin McCollum Option YA Novel ‘This Song’ For Film, Theater

Michael Novick, an Emmy-nominated Glee producer, and veteran Broadway producer Kevin McCollum (The Last Ship and the upcoming Something Rotten! and Hand To God) have optioned Leila Sales’ well-received YA title This Song Will Save Your Life for development as a stage and/or film project. It’s the story of bullied outcast teen Elise, a music lover who contemplates suicide until finding a kind of redemption in a secret nightclub filled with like-minded denizens.

A strongly positive New York Times review said, “Elise is a mostly relatable misfit trapped by a feeling nearly everyone has experienced: ‘I don’t belong here. I don’t know how I got here, and I don’t know how long I can stay before ­everyone else realizes that I am an impostor. I am a fraud.’ ”

Novick had a hand in 32 episodes of Glee, which was originally his film project, though his association with the show ended with an acrimonious departure during the series’ second season. McCollum is a veteran risk-taker who, with sometime business partner Jeffrey Seller, struck gold with Rent, Avenue Q and In The Heights.

“We were drawn to Leila’s beautiful and inspiring story because we thought the journey of the main character was compelling,” McCollum said in an announcement of the project, “and the way she weaves her story and the songs together is unique—a story tailor-made for both the stage and the screen.”

Sales’ deal was negotiated by CAA and literary agent Stephen Barbara at InkWell Management.