EXCLUSIVE: AMC has made a pilot script commitment on the Owen King & Stephen King’s bestselling novel Sleeping Beauties. The goal is to create an open ended TV series and Owen King has been set to write the pilot script. Sugar23’s Michael Sugar and Ashley Zalta will be exec producers.

The book has the obligatory scares…

EXCLUSIVE: Sugar23 Global has taken a minority position in Short of the Week, the premier online short film platform for discovering and launching the new wave of emerging filmmakers. In addition to Sugar 23 and Michael Sugar’s position, filmmakers Cary Fukunaga and David Gordon Green are also investing in Short of…

EXCLUSIVE: In competitive bidding, Netflix and Sugar23 landed feature rights to Erica Katz's upcoming book The Boys' Club. Sugar23’s Michael Sugar and Ashley Zalta will develop a film based on a book that will be published by the HarperCollins imprint Harper in summer 2020.

The Boys' Club follows first-year female…

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix won a three-studio bidding battle to acquire screen rights to Faun, an upcoming short story by bestselling author Joe Hill. Jeremy Slater will write the script and Michael Sugar will produce through his Sugar23 banner with Ashley Zalta. The story will be published in a new short story collection in…

In a heated auction with multiple studios bidding, Netflix won movie rights to Dr. Rapp, and already is eyeing for John Hamburg to write the script and direct the film. The Atlantic magazine article by Jeff Maysh was published in January under How a Stroke Turned a 63-Year-Old Into a Rap Legend. It became the year’s…

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has made a multi-year first-look feature film deal with Sugar23, the company founded by Oscar-winning Spotlight producer and manager Michael Sugar. He and Sugar23's Head of Production Ashley Zalta will make Netflix their creative home, with the streamer getting first crack at any feature film the…

EXCLUSIVE: Sugar23, the production venture founded by Oscar-winning Spotlight producer Michael Sugar, has launched a brand incubator and investment division. Kristin Patrick, the former chief marketing officer of PepsiCo, has been hired to run Sugar23 Global.

Patrick will spearhead plans to incubate and launch new bran…

EXCLUSIVE: Michael Sugar has named Ashley Zalta to be head of production at Sugar23, the production company he recently formed with a multi-year first-look deal with Anonymous Content. Zalta has been Sugar’s longtime production executive and collaborator at Anonymous Content.

"Ashley has been an extraordinary executive…

EXCLUSIVE: Michael Sugar, longtime manager-producer at Anonymous Content, has formed Sugar23, a producing shingle that launches with a multi-year first-look deal with Anonymous Content. The deal allows for Sugar’s growing producing ambitions while keeping him in the AC fold. Sugar, the Oscar-winning producer of Spotlig…

EXCLUSIVE: Finding Dory scribe Victoria Strouse has been tapped by Fox 2000 to adapt the nonfiction Katherine Sharp Landdeck book The Women With Silver Wings, which Tony-winning Hamilton director Thomas Kail is developing to direct. The studio last April teamed with Anonymous Content and Old 320 Sycamore to secure the…

EXCLUSIVE: Sony Pictures has optioned movie rights to the Action Lab Comics series Princeless. Created by Jeremy Whitley and Emily Martin, the series follows a young black princess who, instead of waiting for a prince to save her, takes matters into her own hands. She breaks out of her tower, befriends the dragon…

EXCLUSIVE: Anonymous Content optioned both life rights and a book written by Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, the pediatrician whose groundbreaking research revealed that an entire generation of children were exposed to unsafe levels of lead in Flint, Michigan. The feature film will be written and directed by Cherien Dabis…