Ruth Ware’s ‘The Lying Game’ Picked Up By The Gotham Group

EXCLUSIVE: The film rights to Ruth Ware’s The Lying Game — which debuted to No. 3 on The New York Times’ bestseller’s list –– has just been acquired by The Gotham Group. This comes on the heels of the management/production company bringing in Janelle Brown’s critically acclaimed suspense thriller Watch Me Disappear to its slate earlier this month.

The Gotham Group is set to produce Ware’s first two novels as well: The Woman in Cabin 10, which has been No. 1 on The New York Times‘ bestseller trade paperback list for weeks and In A Dark, Dark Wood, which was the author’s first novel and also became a NYT bestseller. The first, The Woman in Cabin 10, is set up at CBS Films and is being adapted by Hilary Seltz (Eagle Eye, Insomnia). In a Dark, Dark Wood is set up at New Line with Reese Witherspoon and Bruna Papandrea co-producing alongside Gotham.

The Lying Game, which was published in the U.S. by Gallery/Scout Books and in the UK by Simon & Schuster. Besides landing on The New York Times’ bestsellers list when it bowed, the novel quickly became the August pick for Witherspoon’s Book Club.

The Lying Game follows four best friends from boarding school who are brought back together when a morbid discovery threatens to expose the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of one of their teachers. The group was notorious for playing “The Lying Game” – an elaborate ruse that created consequences they never imagined.

Ware’s novels have sold over one million copies in the U.S. alone. The author has had a diverse background: She grew up in Lewes, in Sussex and studied at Manchester University, before settling in North London. She worked as a waitress, a bookseller, a teacher of English as a foreign language and as a press officer. She is represented by literary agent Eve White.